How Berkeleyside Is Organized for Readers

Updated

Berkeleyside is a Berkeley, California local news site whose homepage works as a single stream of reporting rather than a set of separate channels. If you want to know what the site covers and how to find it, the homepage itself is the map: it mixes breaking news, politics, food and business, real estate and development, education, public safety, and community events, with bylines and dates attached to every item. The sections below describe what you'll actually see and how to read it.

What the homepage puts in front of you

The page leads with a small number of prominent stories, then flows into a running list. In the evidence captured, the top items were:

  • A public safety story: "Berkeley animal shelter arsonist sentenced to 16 months in prison," with a note that the Berkeley Animal Care Services facility has resumed most normal services.
  • A regional legal story: "Federal judge rejects the Oakland Diocese's bankruptcy plan," tied to more than 300 sexual abuse claims.

Below that, a latest NEWS block carries the bulk of the day's reporting. Items there included restaurant and nightlife closures (Seniore's Pizza's Berkeley branch, Eli's Mile High Club), a rent board candidate guide, a street style feature, a staff obituary item on Bill Harris, a food-tracking personal piece set in Oakland Chinatown, a West Berkeley hit-and-run, and a KQED-contributed story on Golden Gate Fields becoming a waterfront park.

Two structural details are worth noticing:

  • Sponsored content sits inside the same stream. A StopWaste-sponsored piece on "best by" and "sell by" dates appears alongside staff reporting, labeled as sponsored. Read the label before treating an item as newsroom reporting.
  • Every item carries a byline and a date, often with a separate update timestamp. That's how you tell a fresh story from a revised one.

Election coverage is grouped, not scattered

Election material gets its own labeled block rather than being left to the news stream. The homepage showed a 2026 Election section with a voter guide for Berkeley and Alameda County, a candidate roundup for City Council and school board, and a piece on the seven ballot measures Berkeley voters will decide in November. If you're looking for who's running or what's on the ballot, start there rather than scrolling the news list.

Editors' picks and recurring features

A separate Editors' picks area highlights longer or more distinctive work — in the captured page, a piece on Berkeley's $3 billion AI mining company, a land trust eyeing a private ranch next to Tilden Park, a restaurant-price story built around Cafe Colucci's signature platter, and a list of famous Berkeley people.

There's also an events column, "Around Berkeley," which bundles things like an Indigenous Peoples Day PowWow, a pumpkin patch, haunted hikes, a talk on West Berkeley from 1900 to 1950, a class on building Berkeley paths, and a craft faire.

How to navigate it in practice

  1. Start at the homepage for the day's mix; the lead stories tell you what the newsroom considers most important right now.
  2. Scan the latest NEWS list for topic coverage — food, public safety, housing, education, and local politics all appear there.
  3. Jump to the Election block during campaign season for guides and candidate information.
  4. Check the sponsored label on any item before citing or sharing it as reporting.
  5. Use the byline and date to judge freshness, especially on developing stories like the animal shelter case.

What this means for you

If you want breaking Berkeley news and public safety, the top of the homepage and the news list are where to look. If you want to vote informed, the election section is the shortcut. If you want feature writing and local culture, editors' picks and the events column serve that. The site doesn't separate these into distinct verticals on the homepage — it presents them as one continuous local report, so the labels (latest NEWS, Election, Editors' picks, Sponsored) are your main navigation cues.