I led the design, development and roll-out of a new alerts tool.

The tool is built in the newsroom’s online content management system and it lets users send a breaking news alert to audiences on Twitter, on Facebook, via text message and (ultimately) via push notification.

Before this tool was created, editors would use multiple websites and processes to send an alert – such as that a wildfire had broken out in the forest. The tool auto populates with the best information (pulled from the story and headline) in the best format for each medium. A central bit.ly account lets the Register measure how many people click on each attached link. The new tool’s faster workflow implications also lets us created more niche text message streams for our audiences.