Thank you for posting this great suggestion!
One option that might work well is our Social Corner web part — it’s often used for department announcements like this, though it doesn’t include personalized Alerts/Notifications.
You can also customize Social Corner to look very clean by turning off social icons and reactions, making it ideal for simple announcement use cases.
Would you be able to take a look and see if this could meet your needs? Here’s the link for a quick overview: Social Corner Web Part