This being a particularly early spring and this being Minnesota, it should come as no surprise that our populist tendencies have been in full bloom, like some Midwestern reenactment of the Prague Spring.
Minnesotans have been on the march for and against the Iraq war, on both sides of the gay marriage issue, attempting to draw attention to the genocide in Darfur, cheering or booing new stadiums, and for and against various plans to deal with illegal immigrants. High school and college students have staged walkouts with youthful zeal. Ah, spring.
This release of pent-up civic urges, repressed through the long winter huddled inside, deep in earnest conversations, is all for the good. I’ve enjoyed watching Minnesotans get out and exercise their free speech.
But rallies and protests are largely a numbers game, a flexing of political muscle to convey potential voting strength to lawmakers who might be tempted to vote the wrong way (whichever way that is). Rallies need to be noticed to exert that influence. Generally that happens through news coverage.
Despite much effort by the staff, few who were at those rallies seemed satisfied with the coverage: It wasn’t enough, wasn’t prominent enough or the other side got more.
All of that discontent collided last Monday in a storm of complaints over recent rally coverage. Participants in an Outfront rally for gay rights complained that although their event drew as many as 5,000 people, the paper covered it with only a photo inside the Twin Cities and Region section — while an anti- illegal-immigrant rally that drew about 100 people was covered with both a photo and story.
The anti-illegal-immigrant crowd complained when the “Day Without Immigrants” rally resulted in a front-page story with three photos from around the country. That rally drew between 700 and 1,500 participants here, although the coverage included rallies in other cities where hundreds of thousands marched. Participants in the local rally complained that the headline (“Immigrants take a day off”) made it look as if it didn’t have a serious purpose.
An antiwar walkout by high school and college students was covered in a photo of a protester being arrested. A high school student sent me her photos to show that most of the crowd was peaceful.
A rally against genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region resulted in a photo in the World section on the jump of a story from Darfur. Larry Taylor, an art history professor at South Dakota State University, was “appalled” it was not more prominent. “Does the word genocide not mean anything to you?” he asked.
I must confess to some rally fatigue — or perhaps fatigue at the kind of coverage rallies provoke.
The newspaper should step back and see if there’s a way to bring more consistency to rally coverage. I’m not suggesting identical coverage — crowds as big as the 30,000 people who marched in support of illegal immigrants in early April are major news stories and belong on page one.
But most rallies draw between a few hundred and 5,000 participants. At that level I have a suggestion about coverage: Do less, but do it more consistently.
A photo with a box listing crowd estimates, the topic, location, a quote from the main speaker and a quote from a participant would serve my needs just fine. If the crowd exceeds 3,000, put the item on the Twin Cities and Region cover. If there are fewer than 3,000, put it inside.
Then take the time saved and let reporters really dig into these charged issues. I’d like to see reporters get past the entrenched responses of interest groups and reveal the facts around these issues, truth-squading allegations.
The staff has done some complex stories on all of the issues targeted by those rallies. But the balance is off. Rallies are a very polarizing way to look at issues. Reading back over two months of coverage on illegal immigration alone, I see a lot of coverage of people very for and very against.
There’s a vast body of Minnesotans in the middle who don’t fall into either category. I want to read about what these quiet people, who may not express their views with public protest, are thinking.
They’re the ones most likely to reach across the nation’s political divide and make some real progress moving the country toward resolution on these issues. Newspapers should support them with complex coverage and make sure their voices are heard above the din of manufactured news events.
It’s challenging to get at those stories. But the result could help patch this country back together. Then maybe instead of yelling at each other from a crowd, we can sit down together and solve our problems.
