August 29, 2013 02:00 PM UTC

Story of striking fast-food workers resonates with local media

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• by: Jason Salzman

If you’re one of the organizers of the strikes at Denver fast-food restaurants today, you got to be feeling pretty good about the media coverage.

Unfortunately, worker demonstrations aren’t normally hot news items, unless it’s an NFL players’ strike or something, but today’s walkouts at MacDonald’s, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell were a media home-run here in Denver, like they were in cities where strikes occurred earlier this summer. Strikes were scheduled in about 50 cities today.

A sample of local coverage includes KUSA 9News, KMGH 7News, KDVR 31, The Denver Post, and KOA radio.

You can’t attribute the media interest to the August doldrums or to the good feelings after yesterday’s coverage of the 50th anniversary of MLK’s march on Washington.

High-impact visuals? Nope. Funny chants? Hey, hey, ho, ho, no. Overwhelming numbers? Nope. A media bias toward worker organizing? (cough).

So why the media interest?

Journalists responded to the notion that this would possibly be the largest nation-wide strike by fast-food workers. Their simple demand of a raise to a minimum of $15 per hour, about double the current hourly wage, is engaging. And (somehow) it seems fresh.

These are the people feeding near the bottom of big capitalism at a time when big capitalism is scary big. Their plight (and bravery) resonates, objectively, even if you oppose it. It’s a good story.