The Editor's Back Fence
It's the June issue.
This is the beginning of the June 2024 issue, the second monthly issue of the confusingly named Berkeley Daily Planet. It was started as a print paper early in this millennium by three Stanford MBAs who thought there was big money in small papers.Wrong.
The Planet was never daily. After a couple of years using up the venture capital the founders tired of losing money and left town. The remains of the enterprise (a few macs, some software and a bit of old furniture) were acquired by the O’Malley family for $15,000, just in time . We went on to further demonstrate the axiom that the way to make a small fortune in the newspaper business is to start with a larger one.
Eventually, after several excellent but expensive years with a very fine staff, marred by an unpleasant tangle with a few local theocrats, the never-daily print newspaper morphed into an online weekly journal of opinion. Some of the unpaid contributors opine on the topic of“Berkeley” and others on the fate of the whole “Planet”, but they’re all opinionated and also good writers. We're blessed with a great group of literate and interesting regulars.
We maintain our longstanding policy of requiring people to sign their own real names if they want their opinions published unless they have a very convincing reason for needing to be anonymous.
My job is to shoehorn their work into an archaic software framework, plus writing my own occasional topical essay. Nowadays even weekly publishing takes more work than I’m able to contribute myself, especially with a recent broken ankle, so under this new plan pieces will be posted whenever they come in, top down, with a new list in a new issue started around the first of each month.
As always, let us know what you think: opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.