Sarah Palin may hate the New York Times, but she couldn't have asked for better press.

Check out the evocative last line of this Sunday's NYT opinion piece:

That is, except for Ms. Palin, who figuratively rumbled onto Mr. Romney’s manicured lawn, doing the political equivalent of donuts.

And, for what it's worth, the piece is right on. Palin's novel anti-media tour is a welcome kick in the pants.

I’m all for political people extending every courtesy to us poor, pampered media types. The predictability afforded by such courtesies is often our friend, especially with a deadline looming. But as someone who has consumed —and contributed to — a massive body of predictable campaign coverage over the years, I find something refreshing about the “winging it” approach. And it was instructive to see the media so disoriented upon being deprived of the familiar setups, set-pieces and bubble-like environments of a modern presidential campaign.

We do not know if Ms. Palin was authentically “winging it” — or just giving the impression of it to burnish her freewheeling populist credibility. She is certainly capable of political calculation and personal image crafting of the highest order. Her bogey-manning of the “lame-stream media” carries obvious benefit for her among her base. Whether this can translate into a winning electoral strategy if she decides to run is another question.

But by its counterexample, the Palin Wild Goose Chase Tour served as a kind of object lesson for what the political media environment has become today. “I think that it would be a mistake for me to become some kind of conventional politician and doing things the way that it’s always been done with the media,” Ms. Palin told Ms. Van Susteren. She snickered at the custom dictating that campaigns should “orchestrate” and “script” everything for the media’s ease.

“We’ll basically write a story for you, media, about what we are doing every day,” Ms. Palin said sarcastically.

As it happened, the Romney campaign was trying to do just that on Thursday. By early morning —hours from the start of his actual events — it was widely known that Mr. Romney would participate in a “chili cookout” at Doug and Stella Scamman’s Bittersweet Farm in Stratham, N.H. There, he would focus on the economy, declare that President Obama has “failed” and talk up his experience in the private sector. His precise words were also widely known (“We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy”), as was the identity of the requisite struggling American family (from Nevada) that Mr. Romney would highlight in his remarks and the name of the 12-year old Romney supporter (Hudson Ingoldsby) who would lead everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance.

How was this all so widely known? Because a “senior adviser” to Mr. Romney helpfully provided the data to Mike Allen of Politico, author of the influential tip-sheet Playbook, which pretty much every political reporter in Washington and beyond reads. Mr. Allen disseminated the information, interested media types planned their days accordingly and a few hours later, the announcement went off pretty much as planned.

That is, except for Ms. Palin, who figuratively rumbled onto Mr. Romney’s manicured lawn, doing the political equivalent of donuts.

I have no idea if Palin is going to run. And her gaffes (most recently she got the story of Paul Revere's famous ride completely wrong) will continue to dog her—and add to her reputation as a bit of a buffoon. But I think she is ambitious and media savvy enough to tweak her image, and steer herself away from the Michele Bachmann mold and into the mainstream.