“One of the great ironies of these times …” writes East Bay journalist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor in the Berkeley Daily Planet, “is that we are experiencing an explosion of information and internet discussion concerning local events while simultaneously seeing a drying up of direct news media reporting on those events.

“The Berkeley Daily Planet, bless our hearts, has two reporters covering Berkeley city government, and another to cover the Berkeley Unified School District and the various dealings of the Berkeley School Board. But that is a rarity. Across the border in Oakland, no media outlet—aside from the East Bay News Service’s Sanjiv Handa—regularly covers Oakland City Council or Oakland city government, no media outlet at all regularly covers the Oakland Unified School District, or the Peralta Community College District, or the Alameda-Contra Contra Costa Transit District, and so on, and so on.” (More)