Newsletters | Rachel Adamson

Kansas City Star newsletters

I’ve been working with newsletters for five years now, from writing my own weekly newsletter to managing RSS/content-triggered newsletters.

In my year and a half at The Star, I revamped and wrote a weekly subscriber-only newsletter, frequently wrote our AM/PM daily newsletters, sent email alerts on breaking and Chiefs news and edited two weekly reporter newsletters — one of which I also launched from the ground up.

At Lincoln Journal Star, I managed multiple daily RSS/content-triggered emails along with a few weekly newsletters.

At Tampa Bay Times, I wrote the paper’s flagship morning newsletter that featured 15-20 local news stories rewritten in engaging blurbs.

AM/PM daily newsletters

During my tenure at The Star, I wrote the publication’s flagship morning and afternoon newsletters in rotation with the audience team, where we grew the products to be McClatchy’s most-read newsletters across its 30 media markets.

Through sharp yet conversational language and a firm understanding of story selection and presentation, the flagship newsletters achieved an average of nearly 7,000 clicks per newsletter at their peak from an audience of roughly 80,000 readers.

In the Dotte

In October 2025, I launched a new weekly geographical newsletter written by our KCK reporter in a coverage area historically ignored by the paper. We had to build the newsletter recipient list from the ground up using unprecedented on-the-ground, on-site, and social campaigns to surpass over 1,600 subscribers in its first six months.

I spent hours each week coaching and editing the reporter and writer of this newsletter to deliver a product full of character, voice and authority, building meaningful connections and trust between our reporter and the community she covered.

Reality Check

I edited a weekly newsletter focused on accountability journalism in Jackson County, Missouri, guiding the reporter on how to boil down complex stories into short, engaging bits. I also broke down data to deliver key insights on newsletter growth and prioritization.