The Occupy Lincoln protest, consisting of nearly fifty people camping outside of Centennial Mall, have been giving local media, including the Lincoln Journal-Star and the Daily Nebraskan, a plethora of the closest thing to news stories either publication has seen since the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cornhusker Football Team’s trip to the National Championship game in 2002.
The protest has led to several front page stories in both of these publications, as well as endless coverage on their opinion pages. Many Lincoln readers have been happy with constant almost-news on the protest, saying it’s nice to know where all the people “crazy enough to think this movement can make a difference” have gone to.
“It’s been nice, being able to go to a locally-owned business like The Coffee House or Maggie’s without some idiot telling me that corporations are ruining this country,” avid DN and Journal-Star reader Kate Nielson said. “And the constant news coverage by our local media has let me know that it’s still safe to go into these type of businesses…for now.”
The constant flow of so-close-to-being-news-but-not-really-there-yet stories has been especially good for those responsible for producing local media.
“Thank God for protesters,” DN editor-in-chief Ian Sacks said when asked about his paper’s coverage of Occupy Lincoln. “I know they probably don’t deserve a front page story practically every day for the last 4 weeks, but honestly, there’s just no news on this damn campus.”
“Before the occupy movement I was having to constantly tell myself not to wish for some sort of major catastrophe to hit Lincoln, because we were getting desperate around here.”
Michael Nelson, editor of the Lincoln Journal-Star, concurred with Sacks’ assessment. But he stated that it wasn’t enough, and that the Journal-Star needed an “even more sensational series of stories” to increase its readership to sustainable levels, before putting on a pair of leather gloves and picking up a machete, and asking anyone if they wanted to go to a secluded part of town with him.
