Otterblog

We’re in the midst of working on coverage regarding today’s protests regarding changes in our nation’s immigration policies. It’s a big, sprawling event, and it speaks to some of the internal debates in newspapers about the news value of protests.

We tend to shy away from publicity-seekers, and staged events are often particularly dry. In addition, there’s a bit of the bomb scare in all of this, i.e. we don’t cover bomb scares normally, because of the belief that covering them leads to more bomb scares. But when thousands upon thousands of people do something in a coordinated effort to draw attention to an issue, it becomes news just for the sheer bulk of it all. Anything large enough eventually acquires its own gravitational pull and can’t be ignored.

But what is large enough? 50,000 people on the Capitol Mall in Washington is little more than a blip. But put 5,000 people in Greensboro, and it’s on the front page. So there’s a great deal of relativism in what becomes news.

There are those who argue that covering protests gives too large a voice to people who have a complaint against the government. I disagree. Protest and assembly are vital parts of our democratic system. It is just a fact of life that most of these rallies are against the powerful. That’s why it’s called a protest. But that said, when 5,000 people gather locally to support a government action, we’ll be there.

A quick plug: Tony Flint, a friend and former colleague of mine, has written an articulate book about development, called This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America, published by Johns Hopkins press. It’s a well-done overview of how we got to this point of exurban McMansions, long commutes and disfunctional communities.