Both the Daily Californian (the student paper at UC Berkeley) and the http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2008/09/berkeley_daily_planet_reporter.php are reporting that Judith Scherr, a longtime journalist in Berkeley, has quit the weekly Berkeley Daily Planet in a dispute over journalistic ethics with editor and co-owner editor and owner, Becky O’Malley.

“After 2.5 years of being insulted, berated and lied to by the Daily Planet’s executive editor — and having my stories distorted by the deletion of quotes from persons Becky O’Malley hates and the addition of her nasty remarks about such people — I have left the Planet,” Scherr said in an email she sent to friends last Thursday, according to the SF Weekly.

O’Malley told the SF Weekly that Scherr’s accusations are “almost 100% untrue.” “I don’t really believe that journalists should sue for libel,” O’Malley said in an email to the Snitch, “but I’m mightily tempted, since these accusations are in fact defamatory on their face.”