The first Founders Day has officially come and gone in Auburn. With that mind, here are a few semi-random thoughts on that coverage:

• Heading into the event, we were sure we'd see protesters of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Founders Day guest of honor. We had no sense, though, how many there would be and how much of an impact they would have on the overall event.

It turned out that the number of protesters was relatively low, and their presence by no means was a dominant theme of the day. As a result, we included the protest angle within a sidebar story that was part of our three full pages of news coverage, and we ran a small photo.

But as with many issues involving politics, a few people on both sides of the issue blasted our approach. Some said we should have given no attention whatsoever to the protesters, and others said we dropped the ball with our minuscule coverage.

We felt the coverage we provided reflected the impact the protesters had on the event - they were certainly there and they generated some discussion, but it was by no means the biggest story of the day.

• One thing about big events that always generates debate is the estimated attendance figure.

The truth is that it's extremely difficult to come up with a figure when you have a festival with thousands of people spread out across an entire downtown area.

We relied on the Auburn Police Department to give us an estimate of between 5,000 and 6,000 people - a figure based roughly on how this crowd compared to other public events the city has hosted. At one point one of our reporters overheard a city official saying he had heard the number might be 12,000 people - we didn't go with that number mainly because we couldn't confirm the original source of it. One media organization reported that 20,000 people attended; my guess is that number came from the predictions that were made ahead of time of how many people might come.

The main thing to know about estimated attendance figures at free events is that they are just that - estimates.

• Some readers might have wondered why we didn't have more to report on Palin's political ambitions at this point. What does she have to say about a possible presidential run in 2012? How does she plan to stay connected with national issues while governing Alaska? What does she think of the state of the Republican Party?

We would have loved to ask her some questions like these as part of the weekend coverage, but Palin was clear that she was not going to conduct interviews during her time here.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's column appears Tuesdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net