In The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers blog, Robert T. Garrett comments on a Vanity Fair piece by Todd S. Purdum that explains that former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had a "horse whisperer" from Texas, Mark McKinnon, to serve as a calming presence during the stressful early days of her campaign. The article claims McKinnon's role was as yet unreported, a claim Garrett disputes, saying that the DMN's own Wayne Slater reported on McKinnon's presence in the campaign on the DMN Trailblazers blog.
It's not Sarah Palin or the intriguing notion that she needed a "horse whisperer" that's the subject of this blog item. What caught my eye was Garrett's explanation for why Purdum didn't credit Slater: "blogs such as this one aren't easily scoured by Nexis-type search engines ..."
I'm thinking that can't be true. Maybe LexisNexis chooses not to index the DMN blogs, but there isn't much of a technical barrier to doing so. A quick search with Google (which itself has no trouble indexing blogs) provides a suggestion of what might be going on. Mere Rhetoric reports that LexisNexis is contacting bloggers before syndicating their content. Back in 2007, a quick search indicated the number of blogs indexed and the selection of posts indexed both seemed somewhat random, but it was being done. I'm thinking LexisNexis must have gotten more thorough in the meantime.
Maybe the DMN ought to contact Lexis and let them know of the proliferating number of blogs the DMN is creating. Or maybe the DMN ought to concentrate on branding its blogs, so companies like Lexis (and readers like me) don't have so much trouble keeping track of them. Then, fine writers like Wayne Slater would get more credit when credit is due. Just a thought.
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