The Sarah Palin Email Drop: By the Numbers
This morning in Juneau, Alaska, the state government released a massive trove of emails from the government and personal accounts of former governor Sarah Palin. The release was the fruit of a three-year effort by Mother Jones and other media outlets (David Corn’s “The Sarah Palin Email Saga” is well worth a read). But in an old-school twist – and out of sheer spite – the Alaskan government opted to put out the emails only in hard-copy form and charge news organizations $700 for each full set. So, while The New York Times, Washington Post, Mother Jones and others begin the labor of scanning Palin’s emails, here’s a quick breakdown by the numbers.
24,199: Pages of emails released by the state of Alaska [Mother Jones]
1,100: Number of emails withheld by the state [Mother Jones]
2,353: Number of pages of emails withheld by the state [Mother Jones]
5: Number of boxes of emails [Washington Post]
55: Weight in pounds of each box of emails [Washington Post]
727.50: Amount of dollars paid by news outlets to print one full set of the emails [Washington Post]
21: Number of months spanned in the emails [AP]
3,800: Number of miles between Juneau, AK (where the emails were released) and Washington, DC [Google Maps]
100: Number of volunteers solicited by the Washington Post to scour the emails [Washington Post]
600: Number of record requests made to Alaska government by news organizations [Washington Post]