For as long as I’ve had an email address, I’ve been accumulating accidental subscriptions to newsletters. In middle school, these were often emails on the latest deals from American Eagle. Now, as a journalism major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, my classes require me to be up to date on the news. In one class, I take two news quizzes a week which test our knowledge on current events locally and worldwide.
Before starting school this year, I only received occasional alerts from the New York Times. Now I have turned on its breaking news alerts, as well as signed up for CNN’s breaking news and the “What Matters” newsletter. As the semester went on, I subscribed to more news outlets and now receive alerts and newsletters from each one a few times a week.
UMass offers its students a free New York Times subscription, so my peers and I frequently use that as a news source. While it is a useful resource in many classes, the notifications of headlines I receive never draw me in to the point of interest in the article. I’m not alone – according to Pew Research Center, 52 percent of people who receive push notifications about news alerts do not click on the article to read more.
When I signed up for the New York Times and Washington Post accounts, the websites prompted me to choose my interests to recommend newsletters to subscribe to. I didn’t dedicate a ton of thought to choosing anything other than what I was shown; I trusted their picks. But time has shown that I need to be more intentional about what news I receive notifications about.
Since the election, the New York Times has sent many “breaking news” alerts to me about Trump’s cabinet picks. This includes an update on every cabinet pick, people’s opinions on the picks and scandal updates; this amounts to quite a lot.
But during every election cycle, the president-elect selects their cabinet members and faces backlash. Does another year of the same procedure call for breaking news alerts?
I understand that the most recent incoming cabinet picks might count as breaking news because of the controversial nature of picks. However, when a left-leaning paper provides frequent updates on an event that’s likely to fire up its readers, I wonder if its considering the audience’s best interests.
News outlets like CNN have a page dedicated to documenting the transition of power in the White House; those who are interested in following these events can easily find the information. Despite receiving CNN’s breaking news alerts, I have received sparse notifications about cabinet picks, which may be because of this dedicated page.
News outlets may send out plentiful news notifications to connect with their audience and improve engagement time. The abundance of information a news source offers may lead readers to feel loyal to only using this one news source.
Maybe they’re not thinking about my best interests and I’m not the target audience. So instead of complaining, I plan on unsubscribing from what I ignore and trying to find a newsletter I’m truly interested in and look forward to reading. I recently subscribed to the Washington Post, so I took their quiz about my interests to choose a newsletter to subscribe to. I decided to sign up for “Shifts,” which I’ll receive via email twice a week. “Shifts” is a newsletter about jobs that have emerged recently as the world advances. As a college student soon to be entering the workforce, this interests me. I look forward to having something to read during winter break when I don’t have news quizzes to worry about, and I hope decreasing my news intake will improve my quality of engagement with it.
Piper Morgan can be reached at [email protected].
