The former Alaska governor has started cautiously cooperating with some of the same media outlets she and her supporters have accused of unfair and inaccurate coverage they feel has caricatured her as a flaky lightweight — a narrative her team seems determined to rewrite as Palin openly weighs a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

“This is just about getting the press to characterize the governor accurately,” said Tim Crawford, a top Palin aide. “And, if that can be accomplished through Gov. Palin and some of the people around her talking to the press, we’ll try that.”…

But Crawford said the determining factor in deciding to engage with the press, albeit on a selective case-by-case basis (Palin declined to comment for this story, for instance), may have been a late October POLITICO article in which Republican insiders bemoaned Palin’s popularity among the base and described plans to undercut her potential presidential campaign.

The POLITICO story “may have helped trigger it because of the way that the people who wanted that story to come out — whether or not it was true — refused to identify themselves,” Crawford said.