Women are underrepresented in the media. This paper studies the impact of access to power on the gender gap in media coverage. We collected data on media mentions of all the individuals who accessed a minister position for the first time in France over the period 1970-2017. Using event-study designs and text analysis methods, we show that access to power equalizes the quantitative and reduces the qualitative gender gap in media coverage. This effect persists at least six years after access to power, regardless of whether these politicians remain in government. We provide evidence that these results are not due to improvements in career opportunities, the rarity of female politicians or access to networks of journalists. We argue that women become intrinsically newsworthy because of the news value of power. We discuss the implications for gender quotas.