Overview of this campaign

Newsday launched this newsletter in April 2025 in conjunction with the newsroom’s yearlong series of articles dedicated to reporting on Dangerous Roads. But we did not want the newsletter to just be a regurgitation of those headlines — we wanted it to be a personality-driven, community-building effort that could bring readers’ attention to a serious issue while connecting them directly with a reporter. 

 

Written by Newsday’s senior Transportation reporter Alfonso A. Castillo, the narrative newsletter dives into different roads-related topics the audience can relate to: the dangers of driving, walking, biking or just being on Long Island roads, the rules of the roads, the DMV driver’s tests and laws that shape the way our roads operate. Other Newsday journalists write guest columns for the newsletter, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the latest pieces from the series about pedestrian deaths, hit-and-run drivers or what it’s like to be welcomed into homes of those who lost loved ones. 

 

In addition to reporting news, we hoped this newsletter could be a place to source solutions to the problems being brought to light. Castillo looks at what could make the roads safer and includes suggestions from readers. We created an email inbox, monitored by reporters and editors, designed specifically to correspond with this newsletter so readers could write in with their thoughts and commentary.

 

This newsletter was built to be an inbox experience for people to hear directly from the reporter in their email and encourage two-way communication, though we always include URLs to elements from the series of stories, such as a database of fatal crashes and an interactive crash map that shows the most dangerous roads in each neighborhood.

 

We wanted to build this newsletter list from scratch and did not want to force it onto anyone, hoping only highly engaged people who were truly interested in this topic would be part of the conversation. And we certainly built a community of newsletter readers that we didn’t know we had.

Results for this campaign

This newsletter has been a great example of how community can be fostered through a newsletter and not just aim to drive clicks to the site or our paywall. We found value in creating connections between the audience and reporters and having a consistent way of keeping people engaged following the stories produced by the newsroom. 

 

Castillo — and the guest authors — bring a personal and conversational tone to the newsletters, often going deeper, such as writing about watching his son cross a deadly intersection while walking home from school or his observations about road safety while visiting family in Ecuador. 

 

Since launching in April, Newsday produced 43 newsletter editions; it had an average open rate of 55% (note: a metric that includes both human and machine opens from elements like Apple Mail Privacy Protection); we surpassed over 3,000 people on the list and saw 122 of them become a paying Newsday subscriber while receiving the newsletter. 

 

Beyond the metrics, there are clear signs of thoughtful, devoted engagement from readers. The inbox we built for this newsletter has received more than 100 reader emails this year responding to the topics discussed in each edition, ranging from their experiences driving on a highway to their thoughts about road rules to thanking the reporters and editors for dedicating time to this series. The response led us to start including a section in each edition called “Readers speak up,” featuring a reader comment or question. 

 

The content of this newsletter is mainly exclusive to the newsletter, but we do post the newsletter content online along with a sign-up link for the newsletter. The online versions of the newsletter have brought an additional 4,000 unique visitors and nine paths to conversion.

 

While Newsday’s “Dangerous Roads” series is expected to last a year, this newsletter will likely be continued to keep the conversation going, shifting its focus to Long Island roads in general or expanding to all transportation issues.

Contact

To contact a company representative about this campaign, click here for the INMA Member Directory