SCANDALOUS – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  This story has been making the rounds on the internet and beyond, and the reaction from our side, and I think even from responsible precincts of the other side, has been shock and embarrassment. 

The state of Alaska is about to make public thousands of e-mails from Sarah Palin's time as governor.  Now, these will probably turn out to be routine, and more boring than an Al Gore speech on global warming.   But to the mainstream media, this is an opportunity to pounce, to read every word, hoping to find one more knife to jab into Sarah's back.  I have rarely seen such hatred directed at a political figure, and I've never seen it directed at a woman in politics.

Scraping the bottom of journalistic practice, both The New York Times and the Washington Post have actually asked for the help of their readers – I am not making this up – to go through all the e-mails, since they apparently are no longer capable of doing their own research.  That The Times would ask this does not really stun me, as it's sunk so low.  But I'm surprised that The Post, which has shown improvement, would participate in something this amateurish.

Fine talk-show host Mike Scully alerted me to this good summary of the scandalous development, from NRO:

Talk about citizen journalism at the Washington Post and the New York Times! First the Post:

Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska’s governor will be released Friday. That’s a lot of e-mail for us to review so we’re looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

We are limiting this to just 100 spots for people who will work collaboratively in small teams to surface the most important information from the e-mails. Participants can join from anywhere with a computer and an Internet connection. Read more about how it will work.

If you need inspiration before getting started, take a look at what to expect from the e-mail drop. For micro-updates as tomorrow unfolds, check out our new Twitter feed.

And speaking of copycat journalism, here’s the Gray Lady:

On Friday, the State of Alaska will release more than 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s e-mails covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska. Times reporters will be in Juneau, the state capital, to begin the process of reviewing the e-mails, which we will be posting on nytimes.com starting on Friday afternoon E.D.T.

We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we’ll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate.

Speaking very personally, I am so proud of our nation’s great newspapers, enlisting the aid of our tovarishes from coast to coast in this very worthy undertaking. For Sarah Palin — currently feigning to be a “private citizen” — poses such a threat to the Peoples’ Republic that she simply must be stopped by any means necessary.

Won’t you please help us to destroy her? What — you got something better to do?

COMMENT:  I do hope that there is an enormous backlash against this sleazy gimmick.  And maybe, just maybe, we can get some of our liberal friends to reflect on what they've done.

There are days I'm embarrassed to say that I once worked for The New York Times.

June 10, 2011