While I'm Thinking About It

This is not a political post

It is, instead, about the media.

You may or may not have heard about this, but on Wednesday, there were a number of protest rallies held around the country. Protesting both the apparently socialistic direction that Obama seems intent on taking this country, and the massive, massive debt he's incurring in pursuit of that goal.

Like I said over at identi.ca, "Lesson to take from the PDX teaparty: right-wing nutjob protestors are better groomed than their left-wing nutjob counterparts."

Here's some local TV coverage of the event. The important part starts at 1:14. According to the transit police, there were between four and five thousand people there before the thing actually started.

For contrast, check out this article from The Oregonian. The number given, if you missed it somehow, buried as it was in paragraph eleven of a twenty-paragraph article (and, in the paper itself, after the jump), was "more than 1,000." We have no idea where that number came from, because reporter Janie Har couldn't be bothered to cite her source. Apparently she was too busy looking for people to criticize the Salem rally.

The Oregonian's offices are a handful of blocks away from where the event was held. You would not have known that by looking at the newspaper this morning. There were no photos from Portland in the paper. A gathering of thousand(s) was deemed less important than people starting small vegetable gardens in their yards.

This article was deemed worthy of the front page. This one was in Metro, Section B.

Maybe the Internet isn't the only thing killing newspapers. Maybe they're doing it to themselves.