By
Charlotte Klein,
a features writer and media columnist at New York Magazine
The process for applying for a push alert at the New York Times takes place in a Slack channel called “Notifications,” where desk editors lobby for stories they think warrant a boost. A standing message from the push-alert team offers some guidance: “Accuracy, quality and speed, in that order.” Extensive chains of replies tend to follow each proposed alert — a recent one had 36 — in which editors tweak the language to perfection before lighting up the home screens of the millions of people who have the Times app. “It’s like when you launch a nuclear missile,” says one Times journalist. “You want redundancy.”
If it feels like a lot is riding on the humble push alert, it’s because there is. Amid a traffic apocalypse brought on by the death of search and social media, notifications have become an indispensable, if often high-wire, way for major news outlets to connect directly with readers. “Four, five years ago, it was sort of an afterthought we’d hastily do after the story was published or right as it was publishing,” says Wall Street Journal executive news editor Jonathan Clegg. “Now we think about the alert at the same time that we are thinking about the headline and the overall general sell.”
