This chart comparing the rate of traditional media mentions for the tea party protests and the Occupy Wall Street protests during their first three weeks of existence paints a revealing picture of two very different paths to national prominence:
There was immediate national buy-in for tea party protests from traditional (newspaper and television) media outlets. Occupy Wall Street, by contrast, had to keep protesting for three weeks before it was able to achieve the level of coverage the tea party received just five days.
The traditional media outlets examined in this study have a reasonable defense for their different rate of coverage. Specifically, the original tea party protests were much larger than Occupy Wall Street's kickoff event. However, As Occupy Wall Street grew in both size (passing 1,000,000 Facebook "likes" earlier today) and drama (fueled by police), the level of coverage it received became comparable to the tea party's first effort. While attendance numbers alone do not fully explain the remarkable instantaneity of the national news obsession with the tea party, given Occupy Wall Street's relatively humble beginnings it would have been a stretch to justify an equivalent level of coverage from the get-go.
Perhaps a more important lesson for progressives to draw from the media ascent of Occupy Wall Street is the blueprint it offers for replication. Despite traditional news outlets being both influenced by conservative alternative media and also largely bought into the idea that conservatism dominates the American electorate, Occupy Wall Street has shown that a level of media coverage equivalent to the tea party is possible if there is real drama and if the protesters just keep it at.
The Wisconsin protests in February and March also demonstrated this point. While the Keystone XL protests in late August and early September never quite reached media critical mass, they did come close. The same can be said for the August jobs protests.
Large protests that stretch out over several days are demonstrating the ability to break through the institutional belief that progressive protests don't matter. As such, massive, single-day rallies may not cut it for progressives anymore. From now on, we're going to have to keep at it.
Don't forget to join an Occupy Wall Street group near you.