Editorials

Today is the 38th anniversary of the first Earth Day, a media event created in the United States with the sponsorship of a senator, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. In other countries around the world, Earth Days coincide with the vernal equinox, around March 20, but in this country it’s been April 22 since it started. (The DAR once spread the scurrilous rumor that the date was chosen because April 22, 1969, was the centennial of Lenin’s birth.)  

From the left flank, so to speak, Earth Day is occasionally attacked for trivializing the serious. From a website from the World Changing organization: “The biggest problem with Earth Day is that it has become a ritual of sympathy for the idea of environmental sanity. Small steps, we’re told, ignoring the fact that most of the steps most frequently promoted (returning your bottles, bringing your own bag, turning off the water while you brush your teeth) are of such minor impact (compared to our ecological footprints) that they are essentially meaningless without larger, systemic action as well.” 

Well, yes. After all these years of schlepping paper bags, we’re now told to bring our own bags, but those among us who wonder what good that will do are not totally out to lunch. Little drops of water, little grains of sand, said the poet, make a mighty ocean, and a pleasant land. Or not. Maybe just a flood or a desert.  

Still, we wonder what more we can do, at what level, to Make a Difference. In the five years we’ve been running this paper, we’ve already taken the small steps. We’ve printed with soy ink on recycled paper, the only local paper to do so, and we’ve scrupulously recycled back issues. (The practice of some too-energetic community members of recycling bundles of Planets before anyone has read them is not good, however.) 

During the same period, more and more citizens seem to be getting more and more of their news from the Internet. We’ve had many requests to improve our website, to make it easier to use and to report more news more often, and we’ve been working on that. But our resources are limited, and it’s hard to be all things to all people all the time. 

After a lot of discussion, we’ve decided that the best course of action would be to print and distribute only one issue a week, instead of the current two, on Thursdays instead of the current Tuesdays and Fridays. This would have obvious environmental advantages: less paper and less gasoline consumed. We’re going to increase the number of pages in an issue, along with the number of copies distributed, so the savings aren’t as much as they might seem to be, but they’re not insubstantial.  

To keep our readers happy and well-informed, we’re going to shift gears and make sure that breaking news appears promptly on our website, along with new features, columns and opinion every weekday, with special postings over the weekend if anything big happens. Most of this material will show up in the Thursday print issue too, so readers without computers won’t miss much.  

Often readers tell us that they haven’t had a chance to read everything in one issue before a new one is on the stands. Others say that if they miss their regular pickup day, they’ve missed a whole issue. A paper that’s around for a full week will help with that problem. 

Thursday publication will also benefit those who use our arts and entertainment section and our calendars to plan their weekends. Friday is too late for many people to decide what they’re going to do on Friday night or even on Saturday and Sunday. 

We’re going to be able to provide extra web-only content, since space there is effectively free. We do have some entertaining new ideas we’ll roll out in the weeks to come. 

A good example of what we’ll be able to do: Recently UC teachers have been assigning students to write opinion essays for the Planet. We’re flattered to be taken so seriously, but it’s hard to find print space in one issue for six excellent commentaries on the dangers of biofuels. We could print just one, and have the rest on the web, or we might print excerpts from each and run them all in full on the web. You can see in today’s paper which we chose this time. 

For our loyal advertisers, weekly publication will probably be beneficial. If an issue remains on their prospective customer’s coffee table for a full week, the ads will probably be noticed more. And on the Internet, we’re planning to help our advertisers make full use of the searching benefits of computer technology by starting online directory pages with very low cost basic ads for businesses which can’t afford print display ads.  

And finally, we would not be truthful if we left you with the impression that our motives for making this change were 100 percent altruistic. We’re all five years older since the Planet was revived, and so are our children and grandchildren. The managing editor is now the proud parent of an active 2-year-old. The new schedule with one fewer major deadline will allow all of us to manage our time in more harmonious ways.  

This is our last Tuesday issue. We’ll have a Friday issue this week, and then the next one will come out on Thursday, May 1. To celebrate, we’re inviting all and sundry to attend our fifth anniversary open house that day, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at the Planet office, 3023A Shattuck Ave.  

One more thing: Our basic principle, which has kept us in business for these five years, is that in a democracy if people know what’s going on they’ll make the right decisions. Making sure that everything that happens in local government is exposed to the full light of day is central to what we’re trying to do here. We were part of the effort to get a decent Sunshine Ordinance in Berkeley even before we took over the Planet.  

No one—no one, prog or mod—who has followed the antics of Berkeley’s city government in the last five years is fooled by Manuela Albuquerque’s faux sunshine ordinance, which will be on the Berkeley City Council agenda again tonight (Tuesday). It’s what’s sometimes called a tin fiddle: looks like a fiddle, but sounds awful. If the councilmembers have any sense, they’ll reject it one more time, and give the multi-partisan citizens’ committee version a fair hearing in a month or so. The alternative is a citizen initiative, but that’s expensive and time-consuming. 

We look forward to the day that the inner workings of government are so open that news media will be able to wither away...well, not really. We’re aware that even with the best intentions on the part of officials both elected and hired, someone will always have to shine a light on their activities. We hope to be here to do that for a while longer.