Why Are 600 Demonstrators News?

The Star Tribune reports on a demonstration in downtown Minneapolis, which it considers to be newsworthy: “Hundreds turn out in Minneapolis for march opposing Trump administration’s policies on climate.”

Hundreds? Really? In what way is that newsworthy? Hundreds of people may turn out for a high school soccer game. Hundreds is a big number for a book club, but a pathetically small number for a demonstration. The Strib says:

Minneapolis police estimated up to 600 demonstrators at the beginning of the march around 3 p.m., although more people joined in as it continued.

Let’s assume that the crowd ballooned to a whopping 800 before the march was done. If my arithmetic is correct, that represents .00014 of the population of Minnesota. Who cares? Liberals organize demonstrations like this one for one purpose only: to get newspaper headlines. And guess what: liberal newspaper reporters and editors happily oblige, no matter how puny the demonstration actually is. Why? Because their agenda is the same as the demonstrators’. They want to create the illusion of popular discontent with the Trump administration’s policies, what ever they might be.

That is perfectly understandable as politics, but it isn’t news.