Anchorage Editor: Don't Rush to Judgment on Palin ... or Alaska

By: Joe Strupp A week ago, the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News had no plans to send anyone to the Republican National Convention -- and its busiest Web day had been last March, when coverage of the Iditarod dog sled race garnered 750,000 page views.

Since last Friday, when John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the McClatchy daily has dispatched three people to the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., and averaged about 1.5 million page views daily.

"About two-thirds of our [75-person] reporting staff is on it," Executive Editor Pat Dougherty said about the Palin story, which dominates the paper's Web site. "But we still have a newspaper to put out each day. That [story] has been pretty full-time since Friday."

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Dougherty, a Daily News veteran since 1980, says this coverage on one person is unmatched in his time at the paper, noting that some 50 media outlets have called for his views, ranging from a New Zealand radio station to Al Jazeera. "I didn't speak to them," he adds. "But we have been absolutely besieged with media requests. "

More than Palin's connection to the state, of course, are the ongoing controversies regarding her life, focused on everything from her lack of experience to her teen daughter's pregnancy to a potential brewing scandal involving her firing of a state trooper.

"We have covered her in the course of her governorship, and I think we have responded pretty well," said Dougherty, who notes that the paper published an entire eight-page section on Palin the day after McCain's announcement. Since then, the paper has posted on its Web site nearly every story on her dating back to when she was elected mayor of nearby Wasilla in 1996.

Interestingly, that story stated that Palin, as a new mayor, "may face a rocky transition." Other past and present Web stories range from demand for Palin T-shirts to a 1997 controversy during her mayoralship about the firing of the police chief and near-firing of a librarian.

As for the national coverage that has blanketed the state, Dougherty sees it as proper given that Palin is so unknown outside of Alaska. "The heart of it is her overall experience, and what the process of choosing her says about John McCain's style of doing business," he says, noting the paper had a story Tuesday that said only one Alaskan, a Palin lawyer, had been interviewed by McCain's campaign during the vetting process. "That to me suggests a pretty thin job of vetting."

Dougherty says the national press scrutiny is warranted. "There is a great rush to find out about her and the election time is very short," he adds, calling it "a pretty frantic scramble."

But some of the depictions of Alaska have been a bit unfair, Dougherty says: "It is in the nature of these things to be somewhat caricaturish. We are a long way away, and people are not that familiar with the state. The sketch is a little cartoonish."

On Palin, Dougherty says the inquiries are fair, but outside press needs to avoid stereotyping her. "She would be like most people in that there is more to her than just black and white," he says. "There are legitimate questions and maybe too few answers at this point about governing a nation. I would not want to make a final judgment about her governorship at this point."

Dougherty says the paper, which did not endorse Palin in the 2006 governor's race, had heard rumors about the pregnancy of Palin's daughter, Bristol, for months but did not seek to investigate it. "We did not think it was news we were inclined to pursue. I don?t see that it had much relevance to her tenure as governor," he said. "But when the campaign comes out and announces it, you don?t have a choice but to cover it."

He adds that investigating Palin's part in the firing of a state trooper is fair game as well: "I think there is a real potential scandal. What has happened is the possibility that the governor was exercising the power of her office to get this trooper run out of the force. But he may have deserved it."

Still, Dougherty says his staff is also finding out new things about Palin, stressing that as governor she would not have been asked about the same issues she is being asked about as a vice presidential nominee: "Those are not the questions we would have put to her as governor -- what is your foreign policy experience?"

WANT TO COMMENT ON THE MEDIA'S TREATMENT OF PALIN? Go to the new E&P Pub blog, and talk back under posting about Clark Hoyt's view of the issue at The E&P Pub.