Berkeley Daily Planet

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The Berkeley Daily Planet is a free, twice-weekly newspaper published in Berkeley, California.

In the Bay Area where politics typically runs between liberal and activist progressives, the Berkeley Daily Planet along with the San Francisco Bay View, San Francisco Bay Guardian are powerful progressive political forces offering endorsements of candidates and publicization of activities.

1 History
2 Current Owners
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] History

The Berkeley Daily Planet was founded April 7, 1999 by a group of journalists and Stanford MBAs with funding from outside investors, according to a March 26, 1999 story in the San Francisco Chronicle. According to that article, the idea of calling the paper the Berkeley Daily Planet came from one of the MBAs, Dave Danforth. The Chronicle on April 8, 1999 reported that the new paper "quickly fell under a cloud when it was discovered that the paper's classified ads were taken from other newspapers." The Chronicle quoted attorneys as saying the practice of plagiarizing ads was questionable on copyright grounds and might constitute an unfair business practice, but no legal action was taken. In September 2000, the Daily Planet's owners, venture capitalists doing business as Bigfoot Media, started a second free daily, the San Mateo Daily Journal.

On November 22, 2002, the Berkeley Daily Planet folded. "Employees arrived at work this morning only to learn the newspaper's board of directors had decided to shutter the paper because of continuing financial losses," the Daily Californianwrote in its November 22, 2002 issue. The Daily Cal noted that the closing wasn't a surprise and that the Los Angeles Times reported in January 2002 that the Daily Planet hadn't made a profit since its inception in 1999.

On April 1, 2003, Becky and Michael O'Malley -- described by the Chronicle as a "liberal Berkeley couple who are grandparents and longtime activists" -- began publishing the Berkeley Daily Planet again, but only twice a week, Tuesday and Friday. However, they kept the word "Daily" in the paper's name.

[edit] Current Owners

Becky O'Malley is a former member of the city's Historic Preservation Commission, a member of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and political activist who has opposed new development.

She and her husband Michael sold a software company they founded, Berkeley Speech Technologies, to Belgian speech recognition company Lernout & Hauspie in 1996 for $15.5 million.

O'Malley has continued in the role of a political activist after becoming executive editor of the Daily Planet. A November 13, 2002 article in the Daily Californian said that O'Malley debated a real estate developer at a public forum held at the city library about development issues. O'Malley was quoted as saying developers should not try to turn Berkeley into San Francisco.

In August 2006, she received harsh criticisms for her decision to publish a letter, later characterized by some readers as an anti-Semitic diatribe, in the opinion section of the Planet. It was a response from an Iranian student to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and included the charge that Jews were to blame for the Holocaust. Two open letters containing such criticisms were sent to Ms. O'Malley by local politicians and Jewish leaders and were published in the August 11th issue of the Daily Planet. ^[1] They accused O'Malley of refusing to meet with the signers of the Jewish leaders'letter to discuss her decision to publish the letter from the Iranian student. She denied the charge in an editorial, saying that she had never spoken to or otherwise communicated with any of the signers before receiving the letter and that she was willing to meet with any or all of them. She made several more open offers to meet, both communicated via email and published as Planet editorials, but none of the signers had yet accepted her offer as of September 27, 2006. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/controversy.