Editorials

Happy New Year to Auld Acquaintances and New

By Becky O'Malley
Friday December 30, 2011 - 10:58:00 AM

Happy New Year to all the loyal readers, old and new, of the Berkeley Daily Planet. In honor of the holiday season, I’m taking most of the day off and foregoing the usual too-long essay, but we’re slowly posting the always excellent pieces from our volunteer contributors which are coming in—keep checking to see what’s new over the weekend.

Many times since we’ve commenced this endeavor, in many forms over the last 8 or 9 years, some readers have implored us to concentrate on “the good news”. Well, feel-good stories concocted by “public information officers” abound in all kinds of media, but when things go wrong you won’t always hear about it. That’s one reason we keep on trucking.

We have every expectation that much of the next year will prove just about as annoying as this one. I observe in today’s issue, for example, bad behavior on the part of the city of Berkeley, the University of California at Berkeley, some elements of the state of California and of course annoyances galore at the national and international level.

But things go right too—the early Occupy events are an example of news that is both good and consequential. We appreciate the efforts of all of our readers to keep us informed, on good days and bad, of what’s happening in Berkeley and the big world beyond.