An Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Jon Hochschartner provides some excellent tips and resources for writing letters and getting them published in newspapers.

How to write letters to newspapers in support of cultivated-meat research
From Jon Hochschartner, Slaughter-Free America, slaughterfreeamerica.substack.com
September 2023

Images from Canva

For a while now, I’ve sent letters to the editor advocating for increased federal funding for cultivated-meat research to newspapers across the country. I’ve had some success getting them in big papers, like The New York Times or The Chicago Tribune, but mostly they end up in small publications.

If you want to write your own letters, I’d recommend keeping the word count under 250 words or so. That way you will be under the limit for most newspapers. If you’re sending out a lot of letters at once, try to localize them to some degree. I generally divide my letters by state, referencing the region’s senators in the opening sentence.

Of course, you can send letters however you like, but I have found more success by sending out a lot at once. You get a lot of rejections, but you’ll probably also see more publications. I email the letters to myself and put a statewide email list in the Bcc field.

Sign the letters with your name, street address and phone number. Newspapers should only publish your name, town and state. The street address and phone number are used solely for verification purposes. For instance, publications may call you and ask if you submitted a letter for print.

In the rest of this post, I’ll provide a sample letter to the editor and then my newspaper contact lists, divided by state and organized alphabetically. If you want to make more complete, up-to-date lists, EINPresswire is a good resource: https://www.einpresswire.com/world-media-directory/3/united-states

Sample Letter

To the editor,

Senators X and Y should support increased federal funding for cultivated-meat research. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from cells, without slaughter. It’s better for the environment, public health and animal welfare.

This revolutionary protein requires a fraction of the greenhouse-gas emissions to produce that raising livestock does. Since animals are removed from the process, the risk of zoonotic diseases making the jump to humans is eliminated. Meanwhile, battery cages, gestation crates and livestock trucks can be relegated to a less compassionate past.

Despite admirable progress by the private sector, further government investment in cellular-agriculture research is necessary. This will help cultivated meat reach price parity with slaughtered meat, and develop whole cut products, like cultivated steaks and filets. I hope our legislators will support the effort.

My Name

My Street Address,

My City, My State, My Zip Code

My Phone Number

Newspaper contact lists

Alabama — Louisiana

Maine — North Dakota

Ohio — Wyoming

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: July 21, 2025
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