For Palin's book sales, all press is good press. And for the press, Palin is all good for the bottom line. | AP photo composite by POLITICO The Palin-media co-dependency

Sarah Palin talked on the campaign trail about trying to get around the elite media filter, but this week she’s pushed her way straight through it.

And the media - liberal and conservative, bloggers and network anchors - have responded by dedicating magazine covers, air time and online real estate to everything related to the book-promoting, media-bashing former governor of Alaska. No matter where Palin goes, the media follow - Andrea Mitchell even hosted her MSNBC show Wednesday from the Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Palin’s scheduled to sign books.


For Palin’s book sales, all press is good press. And for the press, Palin is all good for the bottom line.

“I think it’s a great symbiosis,” said Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. “Everybody is using everybody.”

Brown’s site, like almost every one covering politics and culture (including POLITICO), has had plenty of Palin coverage —three of seven stories featured prominently on the homepage Tuesday night were about her. Once dubbed the “queen of buzz” herself in Manhattan’s media world, Brown said Palin stories are still “traffic-bait,” and serve as a big draw for online readers. But Palin’s presence can help media companies the old-fashioned way, too.

“Newsweek is using her to up the sales of the magazine, and she’s using Newsweek to up the sales of her book,” Brown said.

By its provocative Palin cover, which recycled a photo of her in gym shorts that had been taken for Runner’s World magazine, Newsweek guaranteed attention – and perhaps the added bonus of Palin herself criticizing it. Addressing the controversy over whether the cover was sexist on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Palin told Barbara Walters that the picture was “a wee bit degrading” and “cheesy.”

For the networks, a Palin interview is something to be savored, not just for one day, but for many.

Walters sat down twice with Palin over the past week, and most of that footage won’t air until Fridays’ 20/20. In the meantime, ABC has used footage not only on GMA but “World News with Charles Gibson,” and “Nightline.”

Jeffrey Schneider, a senior vice president and spokesperson for ABC News, said that the network had an “avalanche of material to use” across multiple platforms, and won’t even exhaust it all with the segments airing before the lengthier Walters interview.

“My sense is that the 20/20 piece will incorporate some bits of what you’ve seen during the week, but there will be a ton of new material,” Schneider said.

Fox will have its own roll-out. Palin will appear on “Hannity” Wednesday night, and “The O’Reilly Factor” will feature segments from a Palin interview Thursday, Friday and next Monday.

As part of the symbiotic relationship, Palin has been taking pot shots at the media, both old enemies from the 2008 campaign like CBS’s Katie Couric and new ones.

While talking to Oprah Winfrey on Monday, Palin kept referring to Couric as “the perky one” and in her book she spends a number of pages on her “seemingly endless serial chat with the lowest-rated news anchor in network television.” (Winfrey’s sit-down scored the show’s highest ratings in two years).

Interviewed by National Review yesterday, she was asked about New York Times columnist David Brooks calling her “a joke” on Sunday’s episode of ABC’s “This Week.”

“Whatever,” she said, adding that “If I’m worried about what he and everybody else said about me, then I’d be hunkered down in Alaska, hiding out.”

After the Associated Press fact-checked Palin’s book, relying on the 11 staffers in the process, she called out the world’s oldest news organization on Monday for doing “opposition research.”

In the case of Andrew Sullivan, the Atlantic blogger, an old battle has been reengaged.

“Formerly reputable outlets like the Atlantic ran with the loony conspiracy theory that I was not Trig’s mother—perhaps it was Bristol or Willow, they suggested,” Palin wrote in her book, a thinly-veiled reference to Sullivan.

Sullivan, who at one point requested confirmation from the campaign that Palin was Trig’s mother, told POLITICO that “it’s another untruth” and that he “never aired any conspiracy stories. But over the last few days he has seemed a man possessed.

Sullivan not only live-blogged Palin’s appearance on Oprah, but his Daily Dish blog included over two-dozen Palin-related items over a two day period. Finally, on Wednesday, Sullivan informed readers that the blog was going silent in order to adequately read the book by Palin, who he describes as a “delusional fantasist” and “deeply disturbed person.”

“Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning – specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy – we feel it's vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible,” Sullivan wrote. “That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.”

Other sites where readers might be expected to have a harsh take on Palin has benefited from her week back in the spotlight.

On Huffington Post Wednesday, the site’s most popular story was “The 18 Biggest Falsehoods in Palin’s book,” which included over 3,700 reader comments. Items on Palin/ AP and Palin/ Brooks brought in over 3,000 and 2,700 comments, respectively.

Partisan sites on the right have also cashed in on the enthusiasm for Palin coverage.

On Wednesday, National Review promoted editor Rich Lowry’s interview with Palin—“The Rogue, on the Record: A chat with Sarah”—right above “rogue,” a blog launched this week for all things Palin.

Lowry told POLITICO that the magazine has done temporary, topical blogs when “something’s really hot,” with previous ones devoted to the health care debate or the 2009 election.

“She just has an extremely intense following and there’s a celebrity-style following that no one has but Obama,” Lowry said. “She’s a political phenomenon and has dominated the political world this week.”

The blog has been generating good traffic, Lowry said, adding that Palin pieces have been some of the site’s most read, along with weightier fare (the upcoming trial of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed).

On the “rogue” blog, there’s everything from 2012 speculation to photos of people lining up as the book went on sale to YouTube clips from this week’s media interviews—that includes the 30-second promotional clip for “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Is the end near? Not really. Along with the forthcoming Fox interviews—and radio hits with conservative talkers like Laura Ingraham—that’s a lot more new Palin material for the rest of the media to chew over well into next week. That’s in addition to the book tour that is likely to bring out members of the press from Washington and New York City.

In “Going Rogue,” Palin wrote that “90 percent of the newspeople covering [the first McCain-Obama] debate were liberal,” and later poked fun at the members of the elite media who trekked out to meet her on a boat in Alaska following her resignation in July—a group that included Mitchell.

“Now I wanted to see Andrea and her colleagues sporting fish-slimed waders, banging around in a skiff, struck in the mud, and trying to pull themselves over the bow,” Palin wrote. “At the very least they’d see there’s no diva in me.”

Whether on calms waters in Alaska or Grand Rapids, Mitchell and the rest of the media has proven they’ll go to whatever lengths for a shot of Palin.

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