The ability to send a message alerting people to a new News Article would be very beneficial. We use news articles frequently but a targeted alert when one is added would drive more traffic. Ideally this feature would be optional, so messages would only be sent when elected.
We use news articles to annouce minor releases of our software. The users will only be aware if they happen to log in and happen to look at the news section. We'd like to be able to send the news article as an email to selected users/departments/groups. Agree that it should be optional so that you select it or leave it switched off each time you create an article.