Is the Media Over Sarah Palin?

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Newsweek recently published “Is Sarah Palin Over?”  As Newsweek notes, coverage of Palin blogs and social media has dropped. From February to April there were a mere 235,032 blog posts about her and only 135,421 references to her in the social media. As Newsweek sees it, the value of that coverage dropped from $63 million to a mere $33 million. While this is a drop, it is obviously worth pointing out that this is still a great deal of coverage. It is also worth pointing out that a celebrity tends to experiencing both waxing and waning in their coverage. As such, to claim that Palin is over at this point would seem to be somewhat premature.

Rather than asking “is Sarah Palin over?”,  I think the more appropriate question is “is the media over Sarah Palin?” The answer seems to be that they are not-at least in the case of Newsweek. If the folks at Newsweek were over Sarah, perhaps because she were (in fact) over, then they would hardly devote an article to this subject. The best way to show that someone is over, one might imagine, is to simply stop covering that person. The absence of coverage says “s/he is over” far better than writing an article about it.

While Newsweek seems to have been rather Sarah focused, the folks there are not alone. The media, in general, has been rather obsessed with Sarah Palin and transformed her from a minor political blip to a major player (at least in their coverage). Given how important she has been to these media folks, it is hardly surprising that they would want to keep her going. As such, she will only truly be over when they are over her.