The Editor's Back Fence

Regular readers (now more than 20,000 visitors a week, with almost 600 subscribers) will find this week’s Planet particularly confusing. We’re in a new phase of our experimental process, so please read this carefully and then bear with us during the transition.  

From now on, the only “issue date” will be on Tuesdays. That’s the day we have complete events lists ready to post, which will give would-be audience members ten full days of arts and events listing, starting on Wednesday and going through the next two weekends. We’ll “publish” the week’s issue that day. What this means is that when readers type in berkeleydailyplanet.com they’ll get the “current” issue, the one “published” on the most recent Tuesday.  

Then we’ll start adding stories to the “next” issue as they come in. Any time readers want to read these new stories, they can just click on the “next issue” button on the front page of the “current issue”. To get back to square one, click on "current issue".  

If a story is fast breaking and changing fast(the recent student hunger strike, for example), we might also add it to the “current issue” front page, above the original headline and under the red “Extra” heading on the right hand side. As there are new developments, we’ll just add these at the top, while not removing earlier versions. A summary or final version of stories like this will then be posted in the next Tuesday issue.  

The Tuesday issue will also be converted to PDFs (graphic pages) which will be posted on the site . These can easily be printed on home printers and will be available in print from Copy Central at Solano and Peralta for a small charge to cover the printing costs. We’re not going to create a printable version on Fridays any more, but each printable Tuesday issue will have the whole preceding week's content, updated as needed.  

I’ll still be sending email updates twice a week to subscribers, with links to especially interesting stories. If you’d like a free subscription, just click on “subscribe” at the right hand side of this page. And there’s also an “unsubscribe” button there if you want it.