Today's Frank Rich column on Dick Cheney's recent PR offensive is a must-read for two reasons. First, Rich offers some apt criticism of the way most of the media framed Cheney's efforts:

The déjà vu in the news media was more chilling. Rather than vet the substance of Cheney’s fulmination, talking heads instead hyped the split-screen “dueling speeches” gimmick of the back-to-back Obama-Cheney scheduling.

Earlier today I sat down with Ken Auletta, author of the New Yorker's "Annals of Communications" column, before his appearance at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. We covered a fair amount of ground: topics discussed include his upcoming book on the future of media; whether newspaper traditionalists should be excited about Amazon's Kindle 2.

Sarah Palin and Boston city councilor Chuck Turner probably don't agree on much, but they're definitely united in their low regard for the Fourth Estate.

At a press conference this afternoon on City Hall Plaza, Turner--who was recently arrested on a federal bribery charge--seemed angrier at the press than at law enforcement or City Council president Maureen Feeney, who stripped Turner of his committee chairmanships last week and then scheduled a meeting today at which Turner's fate on the council was going to be decided.

It's hard to imagine a more service-y Globe story on the Red Sox than today's front-page piece, which describes the Sox's decision to freeze ticket prices. Consider:

Wall Street is panicking, businesses are collapsing, home foreclosures have swept the land. As the government looks at bailing out banks and the nation's behemoth auto industry, one of New England's venerable institutions, the Red Sox, is trying to do its part to ease the pain of a troubled economy.

Today's subject: new media!

Like Romney spokesguy Eric Fehrnstrom and pretty much every sportswriter over forty, Sarah Palin isn't a big fan of blogs. Or, more precisely: she's not a big fan of "those bloggers in their parents' basement just talkin' garbage"--a phrase she apparently uttered twice in an interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren.

More as it develops.

When last we left John McCain's running mate, she was accusing the media of violating her First Amendment rights.

Maybe it's the relief of getting to the end of the campaign, but today, Sarah Palin is in a more conciliatory mood today. From her post-voting remarks, via CNN.com's The Ticker:

Asked if she had any regrets about the campaign, Palin bemoaned “the state of journalism today.

Here's LA Times political blogger (and former Laura Bush press secretary!) Andrew Malcolm arguing that the press isn't paying enough attention to nastiness among opponents of John McCain and Sarah Palin:

As a growing number of political bloggers, including Wake Up America, have asked in recent hours, how long do you think before the mainstream media starts reporting on scenes like a Philadelphia event on Saturday where people wore T-shirts that bore an explicitly crude reference to Sarah Palin? With 22 campaign days left, might perhaps the Democratic ticket also feel the need to warn its supporters to tone it down?

It seems that John McCain's brand-new stump speech actually leans heavily on an old McCain argument--namely, that the opposition includes both Barack Obama AND that pesky Fourth Estate:

Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We're 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq.

In a speech delivered last month at Ithaca College and newly published at Alternet, the Talking Points Memo founder makes a compelling case that independent/alternative media can get at the truth more effectively than big organizations like CNN, which want to please everybody all the time. Note, as you read, that the implications of his argument are actually nonpartisan:

This week's Phoenix included a short excerpt of a Q-and-A I did with Rory O'Connor, the media critic and author of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio. Here--finally!--is a full transcript of my chat with O'Connor, who recently returned to Boston as a fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy.

Lipstick-gate is currently the top item on Google News. But if you look for the full quote that triggered it, you won't get it from Fox's latest write-up, or the Times's, or the Wall Street Journal's, or numerous others.

This is a shame, because the quote in question makes it abundantly clear that Barack Obama did not, in fact, liken Sarah Palin to a pig.