erin mccann |Verified account

Story time: I've been thinking a lot about push alerts, which are a thing I spent a few years making but am no longer really involved in.

I still get a ton of them, because they are, for me, a way to sift through the mess and make sure I know the big stuff ASAP.

It used to be for work, but now I’m getting them as a consumer more than anything else.

Over the last two years, news orgs have gotten a LOT better at both kinds of alerts: breaking news and ‘check out our cool shit’ ones.

I mean, it’s fun to see who alerts first on The Big Breaking Thing, but it’s even more fun to see those in-between alerts.

I think it took news orgs a while to find their footing there, to accept that readers would welcome non-breaking push alerts.

(I’ve had some conversations with friends lately pondering what shape Election Day push alerts will take. That’s gonna be a fun one.)

So I found myself the other day watching the Drunk History episode on journalism and realizing: push alerts are newsies.