All politics aside, whenever a group manages to pull out the stops and organize a demonstration with thousands of protesters it is impressive. But when the main stream media does not deem the event newsworthy, it falls upon social media to provide coverage, and it looks like the SEIU was up to the challenge.

Today the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] managed to gather 5,000 people from 20 states to demonstrate in Chicago outside the American Bankers Assoc. convention. It is being heralded as the largest gathering to protest the economy since the recession.

A closer look reveals that some of the best reporting on the rally has been done by the SEIU itself. They took advantage of every social networking tool out there;  from Facebook to Twitter, YouTube to Flickr, and of course the all mighty blog. While definitely not an impartial source, the scope of the coverage is commendable to say the least.

One of the union reporters is Kate Thomas. She has a number of informative updates on the blog as well as a slew of photos on Flickr. I want to point out that the photos are not snapshots but descent photojournalistic shots. These prompt posts to the social media sphere lend the world an inside peak into the events.

They've even featured some shots by ex-Tribune photojournalist Heather Stone on their blog. Stone left the Tribune in August of last year to start her own photography company. During her time at the paper she covered everything from the Olympics to summer camp. Her shot of the rally is a great addition to the SEIU's blog.

So the moral to this story? Know your tools and use them well. The event is getting little play from the big three (msnbc, fox, and cnn). In fact, I was hard pressed to find the rally in the breaking new list on any of their Web sites. SEIU's own documentation of their rally may be the only coverage they'll get. With the help of social media, however, who needs the main stream media anyway?

(top and bottom photos by Kate Thomas)