What if Sarah Palin were eaten by a bear?

Yesterday I asked, "Are obituaries obsolete?" My point was not that people don't want to read obituaries. My point was that in this era, we should be building life stories of major figures as online reference material, not waiting until they become death stories. So today we have a perfect example: Sarah Palin gets picked as John McCain's running mate.Sarah who? The Anchorage Daily News would seem to be a good place to look, but its coverage was slow out of the blocks. Finally it had a brief story heavily quoting the New York Times, but there's no life story. Why didn't they have a life story already online? She was heavily rumored as a candidate for weeks. Hey, it's Alaska. What if she were eaten by a bear? Would the ADN be prepared?Wikipedia was ready, of course, with a profile that was edited many hundreds of times over the last few days.Larger newspapers have for years prepared obituaries in advance on public figures. The shift we need is to recognize that these life stories have current value, and that news sites shouldn't be limited to episodic reporting and incremental detail. Build reference pages. Put them online now. Point to them -- and to other Web resources, whenever it makes sense.

Comments

LOL, right now all that Wikipedia page says is, "Tacos." The admins should have been ready to lock that page down. ;)

You have to admit that Sarah Palin is pretty hot (remember she was in the Ms. Alaska Pageant) and MUCH BETTER on the eyes than Joe Biden. Oh and wait until you see the bikini pics!!! NOT BAD for a mother of 5. http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5055328

Easy on the eyes she may be, that's all good, but we will have to see how she performs first before we rush to judgment, that is if she even gets in ridding the coat tails of John McCain.