Good catch!
Discrepancy in timeline!
I’m speculating here — If she wrote an actual letter and sent it through the mail, it would have taken at least a day to just reach the Times. Internal processing would have added a bit more time before it got to an editor and assigned to a reporter. What I’m unsure of is when the first article was published. (Of course, there’s also the possibility that by “writing”, she was referring to emailing them.)