What still gets me stoked about this after three years of round-the-clock work is the fact that “news” does indeed have a broader definition than we gave it in the “old media.” When the tide is exceptionally low, in a coastal area like this, that IS big news, for example, and people not only descend on the beach to see what they can glimpse, they also thank us for the reminder – which more often than not resulted from someone sending e-mail or a tweet or FB note to remind *us*.

What didn’t get mentioned is something that at least did get touched on in a recent survey: The civic-duty aspect of this. So many of us at the major Seattle sites trawl the city council agendas looking for otherwise-buried items to surface, so that people at least have a fighting chance at having a say about something that stands to affect their lives. And the city Design Commission, and the Landmarks Preservation Board, and the Parks Board, and the dozen-plus community councils … Or the development notices that go up on signboards, with an impossibly imminent deadline for community comment. And so forth. Yup, some of it is pretty granular. And all of the people don’t care about all of our items all of the time. But at least they no longer have to wonder “Why didn’t somebody tell us?”