Based on what data? The government has set up a bunch of venues specifically for anonymous whistleblowers, e.g. https://www.whistleblower.gov/overview/submitatip/ https://www.irs.gov/uac/whistleblower-informant-award https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3714.pdf so there's at least some process behind the scenes rather than > /dev/null

He didn't have to hide his identity from a WSJ reporter because journalistic sources are protected by similar set of laws. To the readers of WSJ he was just a "confidential source".

In the article it says "In March 2014, he anonymously emailed his complaint to New York officials.."

Then the article says: "In March 2015, Tyler Shultz was contacted by a Journal reporter through the professional network LinkedIn."

Something doesn't match up here. I can only assume that his anonymous complaint did not reach the desired effect in a year, and he went via other channels, using his own renouned last name.

Yeah, I wish they provided more details on this.

It would also seem rational for the investigative reporter to ping 20-30 LinkedIn contacts who listed Theranos as their employer in hopes that 2-3 would reply, so maybe he wasn't the only one the reporter contacted.

The reporter likely contacted a bunch of Theranos employees via LinkedIn (and probably sorted the list based on former/current).

Was Tyler the only confidential source to talk to the WSJ? Probably not. because of that whole two sources rule good journalists follow.

So your theory is that after Tyler's initial complaint, the regulators waited for a year, and then leaked the anonymous complaint to WSJ, which randomly contacted a bunch of employees, including the original anonymous tipper?

Alternatively, another employee tipped off the WSJ (Instead of, or in addition to a regulator,) and the WSJ started contacting current, and former employees, to see if their story had any legs.

WSJ has its own tipsters, the reporter in question was interviewed by Jason Calacanis a while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgwJA-GOlg