Only it's not chocolates, it's stuff that people need to know, and they need to know it accurately, objectively and in a timely manner, attributes that can frequently be at odds.

I'm old enough to remember, say, 1996, when most people still received their news from TV or their local newspaper. These days you're competing with just, oh, the entire world. You gonna wait to learn about the NSA wiretapping thing, for instance, from the Chronicle, PBS NewsHour or KQED when the story breaks? No, you're gonna read it direct from the Guardian after someone posts it on Facebook while you're waiting in line to get coffee.

So we've done our best to find our niche among the infinitely fractured news audience, as well as learn all the latest tricks about coaxing Web users away from that mesmerizing cat video (while sneaking peeks ourselves). Don't even ask how long it takes us to write a clickable headline around here ... we've got that stuff down to a science -- and by science, I mean water dousing.

So hopefully you've found at least some things useful on these pages over the last several years. More to come.

Seeya.

-- Jon Brooks

Jon BrooksJon Brooks

So Long From News Fix's Jon Brooks