erin mccann |Verified account

(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.

(side note: that episode is fantastic, and it stars Ellie Kemper as Nellie Bly and Jason Alexander as Boss Tweed)

But anyway: your phone is a crowded corner in 1899. A billion things competing for your attention. Carriages careening, twitters tweeting.

And screaming out for your attention comes this kid with a handful of papers, or, now, a push alert interrupting your game of Neko Atsume.

And I just think that it’s cool, that 120+ years later, everything about the industry has changed, but really nothing has.