R.I.P., The Berkeley Daily Planet
Nov. 25th, 2002 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWalking in to work today I was struck by the empty newspaper dispensers for The Berkeley Daily Planet, Berkeley's free daily municipal paper. It seemed most unlikely that they'd choose not to publish today, given Cal's victory in the Big Game last saturday, and so I'd begun to wonder if they'd said something controversial that had caused a knee-jerk student to go around Berkeley clearing out today's news.
The truth was only revealed when I picked up The Daily California, the free daily university paper. On the front page, considerably smaller than the main headline ("We've Got the Axe") was this: "City Newspaper's Short Life Comes to an Abrupt End." It led off with the line, "The Berkeley Daily Planet printed its final issue Friday."
Continued financial losses was the stated reason. Apparently the kind Board of Directors of the paper let the staff know on Friday, the same day the staff was let go.
The Berkeley Daily Planet never felt like a totally professional paper, apparently a result of its extremely small staff. However, it provided coverage of the city of Berkeley in a way that no one else did. It was the only place I could regularly read about Berkeley City Council meetings and its editorial page actually covered important issues in the city at large, not just affirmative action at the university.
I also feel a lot of sympathy for the Berkeley Daily Planet. They started publication in April, 1999, the same month (probably the same day) that I started biking to the northside of Berkeley to work at the company that eventually became Skotos Tech--the online game company that I'm still at. In three and a half years, the Berkeley Daily Planet was still struggling with their business model, just like we are over at Skotos.
If there's a large difference between our two companies, I think it's that the Berkeley Daily Planet was deeply entrenched in a medium which is slowly dying (newspapers). I hope that I can remember the need to push forward into new mediums and new technologies in my own business at Skotos.
We still have quite a few newspapers that cover Berkeley. However the only daily left is The Daily Californian, which is much more oriented around who wins the upcoming ASUC elections--something I didn't even care about when I was a student--then what's really going on in the city. I'd stopped reading it for years before The Berkeley Daily Planet came around, and only started again because I found it amusing to read contrasting reports of the same events--it actually made me gain a new wariness for newspaper stories when I saw how different two reporters could see the same happening.
R.I.P. The Berkeley Daily Planet, 1999-2002
The truth was only revealed when I picked up The Daily California, the free daily university paper. On the front page, considerably smaller than the main headline ("We've Got the Axe") was this: "City Newspaper's Short Life Comes to an Abrupt End." It led off with the line, "The Berkeley Daily Planet printed its final issue Friday."
Continued financial losses was the stated reason. Apparently the kind Board of Directors of the paper let the staff know on Friday, the same day the staff was let go.
The Berkeley Daily Planet never felt like a totally professional paper, apparently a result of its extremely small staff. However, it provided coverage of the city of Berkeley in a way that no one else did. It was the only place I could regularly read about Berkeley City Council meetings and its editorial page actually covered important issues in the city at large, not just affirmative action at the university.
I also feel a lot of sympathy for the Berkeley Daily Planet. They started publication in April, 1999, the same month (probably the same day) that I started biking to the northside of Berkeley to work at the company that eventually became Skotos Tech--the online game company that I'm still at. In three and a half years, the Berkeley Daily Planet was still struggling with their business model, just like we are over at Skotos.
If there's a large difference between our two companies, I think it's that the Berkeley Daily Planet was deeply entrenched in a medium which is slowly dying (newspapers). I hope that I can remember the need to push forward into new mediums and new technologies in my own business at Skotos.
We still have quite a few newspapers that cover Berkeley. However the only daily left is The Daily Californian, which is much more oriented around who wins the upcoming ASUC elections--something I didn't even care about when I was a student--then what's really going on in the city. I'd stopped reading it for years before The Berkeley Daily Planet came around, and only started again because I found it amusing to read contrasting reports of the same events--it actually made me gain a new wariness for newspaper stories when I saw how different two reporters could see the same happening.
R.I.P. The Berkeley Daily Planet, 1999-2002
