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.”

“They’re really important, but the phone is such a chaotic scene with a blizzard of push alerts now that it’s really hard to break through,” says Times deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick. “I wouldn’t say that it’s a silver bullet by any means. But it’s a really useful way to tap somebody on the shoulder and say ‘Hey, check this out.’”

Which means there’s something akin to nuclear-missile pressure not to mess it up. “It’s a big deal when there’s a correction to a push alert,” says a Times editor. “That’s a very embarrassing scarlet letter.” Fox News last year accidentally sent two breaking-news options editors were apparently deciding between:........

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