Berkeley Daily Planet
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.
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 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 noted 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. Becky O'Malley is a former chair of the city's Historic Preservation Commission and political activist in development battles. She and her husband Michael are funding the paper from the proceeds of the sale of their software company, Berkeley Speech Technologies, to Belgian speech recognition software company Lernout & Hauspie in 1996 for $15.5 million.