Opinion

In the olden days, when women used to hang their laundry in the back yard on clotheslines, a lot of neighborhood news was spread over the back fence. The telephone increased the range of gossip transmission, and made it possible for eager consumers to find out what was going on in the next town as well. The contemporary substitute for the back fence is e-mail, a way of finding out what’s become of friends and acquaintances in distant places with little effort. -more-

A reader’s letter in this issue chastises the Daily Planet’s business side for a tongue-in-cheek headline on the latest house ad: “In Greater Berkeley, almost everyone who counts reads the Planet.” The same question was raised in the newsroom by a staffer who thought that the line might seem elitist to some, as it in fact did to this reader. -more-