Former Planet staffer Wolf whines a bit about the Planet folding. He blames readers.

A professor at UC Berkeley's journalism school rattled off the barrage of frustrated e-mails she got from Berkeley "intelligentsia" when the Daily Planet closed. This is horrendous, they said. We need a rag of our own, they said.

But how many of these folks trundled down to the corner to pick up a copy of the Daily Planet five days a week? Maybe the five who were quoted therein on a given day. Otherwise, these people drove their Volvos over bridges to San Francisco or down Telegraph Ave. to Oakland where they cracked open the real newspaper to read about Gov. Gray Davis and President Bush and Jacques Chirac and the Philippines and Iraq.

How about the Planet's shoddy journalism during the Devona Era, including poor writing, copy editing, and the occasional story run twice in the same paper? Or a local paper that covered only three things: zoning fights, High School battles, and City politics? Or a local paper that inexplicably ran boring wire National stories in a town used to reading the New York Times? Mr. Wolf only gives one sentence to these things, and refuses to consider the idea that they might be the reasons readers aren't reading.

Blame advertising or editing or bad design or the lack of home delivery for the demise of daily city journalism in Berkeley. But don't forget to throw in the readers.

Hey, maybe readers are connected to these things. Yow.
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