Editorials

It’s not traditional, or at least not a recent tradition, for competing publications to critique each other in print. In the glory days of the old Hearst chain, of course, wars between newspapers made life fun for readers. But the Daily Planet is not, as regular readers may have noticed, exactly a traditional community paper. We’re not shy about either praising or blaming other papers when the opportunity presents itself. 

In that spirit, we’d like to direct your attention to the June 16 issue of the Eastbay Express, the local outlet for Phoenix’s New Times chain, which also fronts the SF Weekly. It’s not really competition for the Planet, occupying, as one of its column titles confesses, the bottom-feeder niche in the journalistic feeding chain. The corporate empire doesn’t understand why Berkeley isn’t Hayward or Concord, but that’s just fine with us. In between the articles about sex triangles in the suburbs it occasionally offers a story about happenings that affect the kind of people who read the Planet, and when such a story surfaces we feel obligated to call our readers’ attention to it.  

In the current issue Chris Thompson offers the kind of hyperbolic overwritten hysterical take on the university’s long range development plans which he pretends to despise in other contexts. Presumably in order to placate his corporate masters, he structures his piece in the form of pitting the genteel tactics of a hills resident who opposes the university’s plan for building housing in her upscale neighborhood against the tackier efforts of the flatlands residents who have long been wary of a variety of projects in their neighborhoods.  

Here’s a sample: 

“For too long, reactionary NIMBYs have hijacked the planning process in Berkeley, stifling the most modest and sensible apartment complexes with petty complaints and trumped-up appeals to the city’s historical heritage. Today, Mayor Tom Bates and UC Berkeley officials are working to build a downtown hotel, convention center, and new home for the university arts museum—a project that will flood the city’s coffers with tax revenue, transform the ugly half of Center Street into a wonderful new arts and retail corridor, and establish a constructive tone for future town-gown relations. But a small cadre of nit-picking harpies has swarmed around the proposal, using absurd ad hominem attacks to denounce it at public meetings and in the pages of the Berkeley Daily Planet. In search of allies to help her fight against the hills housing project, Andrea Pflaumer has lately been talking to members of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste, that tiresome group of hysterics who endlessly carp about Lawrence Berkeley Lab—not to get anything done, but merely to hear themselves squawk.” 

Huh? Nice hills lady good, flatlands environmentalist folks bad? I suspect Ms. Pflaumer (whose sensible opinions were first printed in the Planet, of course, way back on June 11) will be quite uncomfortable with the style of the Express’s ringing endorsement of her cause. She is wise to seek out her logical allies, and even wiser not to be suckered by politicos who have a record of delivering not much more than promises.  

Chris, on the other hand, is lining up, tin plate in hand, for his pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by: 

“But UC Berkeley’s days of reshaping the city with impunity may be coming to an end—and just in time for the great town-gown wars to begin anew. East Bay Assemblywoman Loni Hancock is pushing a bill that would fundamentally change the way the universities build in their host cities. If the bill passes, whenever a UC building project identifies significant impacts on city infrastructure, university officials must sit down in a public hearing, identify how much it will cost to deal with the problem, and either cough up the money or explain—before a crowd of potentially angry citizens—why they can’t afford to. Berdahl and his successors will still be able to cram projects down their neighbors’ throats, but now at least they’ll have to do it in public.” 

Oh, swell. I’ve lived in Berkeley a lot longer than anyone at the Express, and I’ve heard this song before. I remember Ms. Hancock’s sweetheart deal, when she was mayor, with cuddly Chancellor “Mike” Heyman, which accomplished almost exactly zilch. Now that her husband’s mayor, he’s got a better sweetheart deal? Don’t count on it. 

Maybe Hancock will get it right this time, but even according to Thompson’s account her bill seems to promise not much more than another opportunity to gripe, for all the good that does. We need a bill with real teeth in it, which this one isn’t. 

Thompson doesn’t agree. He advises Ms. Pflaumer to rely on the Hancock bill, and against forming common cause with other Berkeleyans: 

“If she wants the university to take her seriously, Pflaumer would do well to be more choosy about the company she keeps. Indeed, so could every reasonable Berkeley resident. If Hancock’s bill passes, the university will finally be forced to deal with its neighbors in good faith. If the neighbors expect any progress with the university, they had better learn to do the same.” 

We could go on with the foolish quotes, but hey, the Express is free and widely available everywhere. Though we think Thompson’s anti-NIMBY name-calling is, to put it mildly, labored, we nevertheless support his hyberbolic hysterical over-written call to arms against university encroachment. But we don’t have to tell our readers that. As usual, you read it first in the Planet. 

—Becky O’Malleyô