Editorials

It’s been at least a year since I announced online that the Planet would be taking a brief hiatus. The hiatus turned out to be longer than I had expected. Since the word “hiatus” implies eventual resumption, it’s time to finally decide if this is more than a pause. 

It turns out that old age is not necessarily a tsunami but is a series of those small drips that end up wearing down a stone. At the moment I don’t walk very well, thanks to arthritis and a broken ankle . The mechanics of posting copy are somewhat painful due to carpal tunnel syndrome. But cataract surgery has made it possible for me to read again, so I’m basically fine, considering how old I am.  

Meanwhile Berkeley in the time I’ve known it has never had worse local government than it does now. There’s been spotty news coverage of Berkeley in the last few years, which might be why our electeds have gotten so bad. Voters need consistent reliable information to make informed choices, but that’s been lacking for too long. I wish I could still help to provide Berkeley news on a regular basis, but I can’t. We can’t afford to hire reporters these days and I’ve slowed down, no doubt about it. 

Like the heroine of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, I must resign from the job of General Manager of the Universe. What did we accomplish with the Berkeley Daily Planet? To answer this question I quickly reviewed the online Planet archives. It turns out that the Planet was prematurely right about a whole bunch of things which are still important. The headline might be “I told You So”. 

One story that stands out was Richard Brenneman’s coverage of the giant boondoggle of UC Berkeley’s transmogrification of Memorial Stadium, which was responsible for saddling UCB with an obscene amount of debt. Revenue from football games is way down, so UC is trying to monetize the stadium as a very loud amplified music venue, but that probably won’t work.  

We told you so. 

Another well-covered topic was the ongoing destruction of downtown Berkeley by the university/developer complex. The area has been taken over by Big Ugly Buildings, mostly luxury dormitories which do nothing to relieve the genuine shortage of affordable family housing. Most useful retail businesses are going or gone, as are most theaters. All of this was documented in the Planet as it was starting to happen. 

We told you so. 

Publication in the Planet’s Commentary opinion space of a caustic criticism of Israel by an Iranian student was an event which had huge repercussions. The essay included an unartfully phrased and offensive assertion that victims of antisemitism brought it on themselves by claiming to be “the chosen people”. Except for that very serious gaff, the rest of the writer’s discussion of the toxic relationship between Israel and its neighbors is painfully relevant today. It was too much too soon when it appeared,but if Israeli citizens and their U.S. allies had been exposed to negative opinions like this one, they might have found leaders who could have averted the current disaster. Instead, here in Berkeley a veritable panoply of self righteous citizens, especially AIPAC and allies, clergy and politicians, including many self-styled progressives, worked hard to enforce their belief that Israel could do no wrong by scaring away our advertisers. Not, of course, as we learned in retrospect, would it have been possible to keep a little biweekly suburban paper afloat with advertising, as many similar publications have learned to their regrets. A few million dollars later, we do understand that point.  

Even though we can’t blame the Berkeley Daily Planet’s financial problems on over-zealous Zionist militants, dealing with them was an exhausting experience. We greatly appreciate the hundreds of readers who supported the Old Berkeley tradition of allowing free speech, even if it’s speech you detest. 

The cost to produce a print publication just got too high. We eventually had to lay off most of the staff. For a while we attempted to produce an online version with a single reporter, but putting together a real news source without enough real reporters , regardless of the medium, is impossible.  

We continued to publish the opinions of our literate and unpaid commentary contributors for a while. I edited a Commentary-anchored online version using the cumbersome formatting software inherited from the original Planet, but the mechanics of editing aggravated my carpal tunnel problems. For the many readers who still preferred to have paper in their hands when reading, we arranged with a copy shop to print paper copies on demand, but the very nice proprietor who provided this service had to stop after he got scary threats from a couple of, yes, hyper-militant Zionists. 

There has been no reporting in the usual sense in this space for a long time, but we have published some interesting opinions . For many months local progressive activist Kelly Hammagren has faithfully produced a weekly calendar of upcoming City of Berkeley meetings with their agendas to make citizens aware of what’s being done in their name by local government. She’s attended a fantastic number of those meetings herself and has written up her observations as an “activist’s diary.” I regret that can no longer publish her work on a regular basis, and am happy that she continues to do so in other venues, including SubStack.  

I’ve been glad to post opinions on non-Berkeley topics, and even analyses of local events. News about the city of Berkeley today can now be obtained from a variety of pretty good sources.  

When I came here first in 1959 as a student I think the mayor might even have been a Republican, but in those days students had no voice (or interest) in City of Berkeley matters. There was a small-town daily, the Berkeley Gazette, but we didn’t read it.  

When our family came back to Berkeley in 1973 after 12 years in Ann Arbor we were just in time to benefit from white flight in the wake of Berkeley’s school integration. Undesirables, the kind of people you wouldn’t want to know, were selling their houses and moving through the tunnel to Lamorinda to escape. Real estate prices dropped. Berkeley was becoming economically more diverse, especially with rent control. The Free Speech Movement and People’s Park were in living memory. 

The coverage of the city of Berkeley at that point was mostly “Beserkeley”(ideas and events mocked by corporate newspapers ) lively alternative publications like the East Bay Express, the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Bay Guardian (where I worked while I was in law school). 

These days conscientious citizens, if they’re willing to do the work, can piece together a pretty good picture from various perspectives of what’s going on around here. 

There are several publications, online and on paper, which appear to follow the rule espoused by the Wicked Witch in The Wiz: “Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” The corporate East Bay Times is in that category for occasional Berkeley stories, as is the paper-only Berkeley Times. That’s the good news. 

If you also want to hear the bad news, the San Francisco Chronicle, now part of the Hearst empire, does occasional Berkeley stories, though it often get things wrong. For a more accurate analysis of what’s happening, San Francisco’s 48hills.org has published several well-researched quasi-academic essays about Berkeley which illuminate the root causes of our problems. The non-profit Berkeleyside.org makes a valiant effort to cover breaking news, but its copy tends toward restaurant closings and feel-good puff pieces, spiced up by occasional police blotter reports. The Berkeley Scanner is nothing but blotter. Often the UC student paper, the Daily Cal, has the best overall breaking news coverage . 

Berkeleyans who consume all of these varied media offerings can figure out what’s going on, but judging by the execrable quality of the current electeds, the majority of Berkeley voters don’t make the effort. All too often I hear from supposedly well-educated Berkeley residents that they get all their news from the New York Times. They are not interested in Berkeley stories. They kvetch about their councilmembers without even knowing their names. They’ve never even heard of Berkeleyside.  

Nevertheless, it does seem that Berkeleyans are now able to get the news they need if they bother to look for it. That’s why we think that it’s okay to officially abandon periodic publication of the Berkeley Daily Planet. We’ll keep the archives online for historical purposes, so you can use the “search” buttons at the top of this page to find past issues and articles which might shed light on currents events.  

We’d like to thank the loyal subscribers who have stuck with us for so long. Let me know if you want to continue on my “subscriber” email list or would prefer to be taken off. I might send you occasional newsletters if I write them. I might also occasionally sound off in this space, but don’t expect me to do so often.