Palin’s past packed them in

While the buzz and business that comes with being the hometown newspaper of VP nominee Gov. Sarah Palin continues, from our offices here in Wasilla, Alaska, it seems the national media’s seemingly insatiable appetite for everything Palin may be waning.

The newsroom at the Frontiersman is usually hopping, but in the first weeks after Palin’s emergence onto the national stage, there have been days we had more reporters working for other publications in the newsroom poring over our archived editions than our entire staff.

Along with the sometimes more than steady stream of interview requests (I don’t know how our publisher, Kari Sleight, found time to respond to and accommodate as many of these requests as she has), a quick glace around the newsroom would tell you something big is simmering. Dozens of our heavy bound volumes dating back more than a decade and a half were stacked around, most sporting multiple yellow sticky-notes marking anything from Palin’s past chronicled in our pages.

Television crews from around the world have filmed these pages while journalists living out of carry-on suitcases got a crash course in what Wasilla’s all about. Most have been respectful and a pleasure to meet, a few not.

Well, those books filled with Frontiersman pages are finally back home in our morgue. The symmetrical book stacking that dominated our desks is no more. They’re still in demand, but like runoff in springtime, the initial flood has slowed to a trickle.

People ask every day if I can’t wait until the election is over so things can get back to “normal.” I tell them no way. One of the most rewarding challenges is never knowing what news is about to break or how a continuing story will play out. In nearly 18 years of newspapering, I’ve never wished for “normal.” Normal’s boring. Although the bound editions are back home, Palin is still big news nationally and here, and we’ll continue to give those perspectives only her hometown paper can.

On that bent, check back tomorrow, where I’ll blog about some of the things I learned from Palin’s senior yearbook. And maybe even some of those photos we all cringe at seeing decades after the fact.

—Greg Johnson, managing editor