Read this thread about the right’s use of targeted attacks on journalists. It’s part of the broader effort to undermine the free press.
https://twitter.com/taylorlorenz/status/1498708809061076992
It's worth remembering that this has been a tactic long used by the US far right. Here's an example from 1959. Robert Edmundson, one of the US's most virulent antisemites & Nazi sympathizers died in Bend, Oregon (pop 12,000). The paper printed a critical opinion piece about him. 
Over the next few weeks the paper received hundreds of pieces of mail from across the country attacking them for their decision. One of the nation's leading antisemitic periodicals had encouraged readers to write to the editors of the Bend Bulletin.
Eventually the editor of the humble Bend Bulletin finally said "enough already" and stopped printing those replies, in part because they were just filled with racist and antisemitic bile, as well as thinly veiled death threats.
A small sampling of the sorts of letters they received from the American deplorables of the late 1950s. CW: racist language.
This tactic was adopted by the Oregon far right activist I'm currently researching, Walter Huss. He represented a small but vocal segment of far right Oregonians who he could activate to engage in coordinated letter-writing campaigns.
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1397430142524268547?s=20&t=is8qzJNb1qjC6d7bMpp0pA
I've spoken with a researcher who was given access to the avalanche of angry letters President Fleming received in 1964. For Huss, this was part of his broader project to destroy institutions like higher ed & the mainstream press wch he thot were part of the communist conspiracy.
It's important to note that the right wingers harassing journalists today on social media are, like the supporters of Huss and Edmondson were in their day, are just a handful of people trying to maximize their impact by giving the impression that they are legion.
They draw upon existing, dominant values (anti-communism, anti-child trafficking, etc.) to claim that it's those values motivating their harassment, but it's not and they know it, and the people on the receiving end know it. But their goal is to deceive the unwitting public.
Their other goal is to raise the costs of working on behalf of the public as either a college President or a journalist. Make those jobs so annoying and onerous, gum up the institutional works, so as to weaken and eventually destroy those institutions.
Coordinated letter-writing campaigns are a tactic that political movements across the spectrum have used. What made the far right campaigns different is that they tried to not just change public opinion, but also to undermine the institutional structures of liberal democracy.
If you want to get a taste of Edmondson's Nazi bile that those writers to the Bend Bulletin were defending, some of his pamphlets can be read through the US Holocaust Memorial's website. collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog…
I would contrast the far right, coordinated letter writing campaign with the sort of work Oregon's Edith Phetteplace engaged in for several decades. Dozens of times per year she would write a letter to the editor sharing her views.
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1419749640195346436?s=20&t=is8qzJNb1qjC6d7bMpp0pA
Over time Phetteplace became kind of a known figure in local Oregon politics as "that right wing woman who is always writing letters to the editor filled with her whackadoodle ideas."
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1419776849631080469?s=20&t=is8qzJNb1qjC6d7bMpp0pA
As far as I know, her letters always found a home in her local newspapers. She was not cancelled or silenced. While she probably emboldened some folks who were already with her, there's little evidence that her one voice changed many minds in the direction she wanted.
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