Anchorage NBC Affiliate Annoyed at Being Bypassed by Palin

Anchorage NBC affiliate KTUU is trying to get one last ratings boost out of Governor Palin, running a "retrospective" series this week. The first entry was yesterday...of course it consists of pretty much nothing but criticism, but there are some interesting tidbits in there about the NBC policy toward Palin:

"She knew when she came back that she came back to a different environment," Stapleton said. "I think it was -- and I hate to say it -- but I think the Thanksgiving pictures coming out of Channel 2 with a turkey getting slaughtered over her shoulder was her first very real awareness that she was back to a different and much more disrespectful environment."

The turkey incident had to do with Palin pardoning a turkey prior to Thanksgiving, and then giving an interview in front of the contraption where turkeys are slaughtered.

"It shouldn't have been on the air because I felt it was out of context with what the story was all about," [Channel 2 News Director Steve] MacDonald said. "The story was about pardoning turkeys and we had a turkey in the background being slaughtered."

The interview only made Channel 2 News briefly. But it was only a matter of minutes before the video had gone national, soon to be parodied on "Saturday Night Live."

"NBC says, ‘If she's doing something, we want to know about it.' Well our assignment desk did what it was asked to do, and when that video came in, it shipped that video via satellite to NBC," MacDonald said.

Channel 2 would never get another sit-down interview with Palin.

MacDonald also did a little whining about the fact that Governor Palin bypasses the media to get her message out directly to the people:

"I find it interesting that journalists now find out about what's going on with the governor by monitoring her Twitter account, or whatever it is -- I haven't done that myself, perhaps I should" [Gregg Erickson, founder of the Alaska Budget Report] said.

For MacDonald, and perhaps for a press corps with expectations of openness and transparency in government, it's a less-than-acceptable communication method.

"Twitter does not cut it," MacDonald said. "No, I'm sorry."

Update by Mel: As you probably noticed from the excerpt above, KTUU broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism with this piece: They made themselves the story.

UPDATE by RAM: Twitter "doesn't cut it" because now they have to get the scoop like the rest of us members of the unwashed masses. We are witnessing the last wail of dinosaur media before fossilization occurs. Maybe in millions of years they'll be useful again as the media equivalent of crude. But I'm not holding my breath.