The Press Begins to Question Its Coverage of Sarah Palin

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has written "I'm declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!"

New Yorker magazine's Amy Davidson responded with "No Pledge on Palin."

Andrew Sullivan says, "No surrender" in "A Palin-Free February?"

Rather than debate whether Palin should be covered, it might be better to decide what is worthy of coverage.

A tweet? That's 140 characters, max. Can anyone address a foreign policy question, domestic legislation, taxation and a host of other issues in 140 characters? Probably not. But things like a meeting with a newspaper's editiorial board or an in-depth interview would be worth covering. So would an announcement that she's going to run for the Republican nomination. So would a news conference.

A Facebook post? Probably not, because, like a tweet, there isn't an opportunity to ask questions, to clarify what she means.

The one thing that distinguishes Sarah Palin's interaction with people is that it's all one-way communication. Perhaps nothing Palin says should be covered unless it involves some dialog, a little give and take. Let her meet the press and face the nation, then what she has to say may be worth covering.

For a long time now, this blog hasn't covered Sarah Palin's tweets and only rarely her Facebook posts, and, in the aftermath of Tucson, there may be fewer posts. There aren't as many things to blog about anymore; for example, the Palin Family Circus News may never appear again, because there no longer seems to be anything amusing about Sarah Palin. We even started Blogging towards Bethlehem, our Palin-free space, so we could continue to blog about important, interesting, even fun things.