If Google News revolutionized search results on the Internet for journalism, it left one vital fact out of the story, organization and abstract of the search --- who wrote it.

Now it has added reporter bylines to stories in the search result. The addition means it's now possible to set up feeds of particular reporter's work or an alert when someone publishes something.

It's a highly useful tool and will, I suspect, help develop traffic for individual journalists as they either work within an organization or as solo players.

The tradition in news organizations is to believe their work is definitive. The corollary of that belief is that others' work is inferior. The product of that belief is to dismiss, disregard and even discredit anyone else's work.

The new ethic, though, is quite different. The news organization exists in an era of easy access to abundance. There is no pretending any longer that others aren't producing some of the same journalism --- or even beating you to the story.

For some time now many organizations have been linking out, curating content online for users and recognizing that there are many elements worth consuming --- and, thus, they ought to be consumed readily without arduous searching.

Ryan Sholin posts in BeatBlogging.org some key arguments for news organizations to link:

1. We owe it to readers to give them as much as we can.
2. Linking out is a key to being a citizen in the digital sphere.
3. It's the best way to link with the community in your town.
4. We don't know everything, but know where to find what we don't know.
5. It makes our jobs easier.

I am writing this as Don Newman completes his last Politics program for CBC Newsworld. Any minute now he'll sign off and a storied career will end its most significant chapter.

I was fortunate enough to be hired as a host 20 years ago next week in Ottawa at the largest-ever journalistic experiment in Canadian history this generation, the all-news cable channel that complemented CBC's extensive conventional channel news material.

Don was brought aboard in a much larger role as the anchor of daily material in Ottawa, and given the amount he had to front, we fellow employees immediately renamed the channel Newsmansworld. In the early days it was Don's job to stickhandle the network's coverage of the House of Commons and much of its parliamentary and political material. His role only expanded; one thing about a national capital that's certain is its endless supply of politicians to interview, and Don was relentlessly present and consistent.

It is no exaggeration to say he would be on the air at times for hours day and night anchoring or bookending events, and it is also no exaggeration to say he was able at times to summon some sort of encyclopedic memory to --- well, let's be frank --- kill time when it was necessary to bridge to a live event. Don could cite statistics, round it into shape, keep a coherent narrative and move to the event better than anyone under such circumstances I've ever seen on TV.

Truth be told, the CBC culture of that early time made Newsworld feel a little lesser-than, mainly because it consumed a lot of CBC News' resources without paying for everything at first.

But because Newman was out of its fold --- he hosted This Week In Parliament and was a reporter in the CBC News Ottawa bureau --- he was able to push back and demand that the place be taken more and more seriously.  As more and more funding issues hit the public broadcaster, the cable revenue stream for Newsworld made it more and more economically important --- and thus more and more journalistically supportive of the overall CBC News enterprise.

Some of the top talent at CBC found its way to Newsworld and a lot had to do with Don's own credibility that built an audience and reinforced the business model of a cable news channel (CTV later launched a rival). I believe he is the lone remaining anchor of that start-up still in place, but the start-up would not be the fortified Canadian channel were it not for his continuity.

Along the way he earned the Order of Canada and interviewed everyone in Canadian politics, always with a reasonable tone of reverence and an underlying accountability. He knew his files as well as anyone and the politicians knew they weren't going to slip assertions by him, so they came and dealt honestly or didn't come so as not to be embarrassed by their hubris.

His retirement really signals an end to a particular brand of programming and a real loss for . (Disclosure: I've done the show a couple of dozen times over the years.) I'm not sure who or what replaces him, but it won't be the same.

Google is developing Flipper, a new reader for Google News that visually displays results.

From the beta screen-grabs assembled at Techcrunch, it's an obvious step up from the plain-text results on Google News. Search can be conducted by words, phrases, most-popular and recommended, so there is greater flexibility.

The implications could be significant for the news business, in that Flipper is bound to make more attractive the results of search. The search flexibility yields some interesting pages, so in the hands of news consumers, Flipper might be very handy.

Larry Kramer, former journalist and head of CBS Marketwatch, posts in The Daily Beast today that news organizations aren't sufficiently muscling their way into the new social media order.

Kramer is concerned that the Twitterverse might become the victim of hucksters and the inauthentic and he believes that reliable news organizations will need to find their place within the social media sphere and reassert themselves.

"Our news organizations need to understand these audience changes and become part of the new ecosystem in a way that enhances these living streams of information, not ignore them," he concludes.

The Internet has surpassed television and other media as the most vital news and information source in the U.S., a new Zogby Interactive poll finds.

Asked what they would choose if they had only one source of news and information source, slightly more than half chose the Internet, 21 per cent chose television and 10 per cent chose newspapers and radio.

But it's clear that social media hasn't yet taken hold as a resource. Only a small fraction cited Facebook or MySpace and an even smaller cohort cited Twitter as a good source of news.

As for most popular news source, the Internet again ranked first: 40 per cent chose the Net, 17 per cent chose TV, 16 per cent chose newspapers and 13 per cent chose radio.

What's clear, Zogby said, is that the efforts by conventional media to direct readers to their sites are working.

Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine is required reading in the digital age, but if you're going to understand something new today, it should be his evaluation of how Twitter's open publishing system --- its API --- has particular value.

For a few days the Twitterverse has been alight with praise of the efforts by many people to employ Twitter's open system to help thwart efforts to curtail commentary coming from an Iran in political turmoil.

Jarvis articulates nicely the technical enabling of the Iran dissidents through Twitterphiles that employ its open-sourced publishing. In some ways people are pointing to this juncture as the time Twitter became of global value --- especially in view of restrictions on mainstream coverage --- but Jarvis is the first to put it smartly into sentences.

The annual PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on media and entertainment is an attempt at definitive guidance on trends in the next five years on spending. Its release today points to some significant developments:

1. Spending will rise at a relatively slow rate of 2.7 per cent through 2013, with most of the growth in 2012 and 2013, to reach $1.6 trillion worldwide.

2. Mobile and video game advertising will flourish, while conventional advertising will be flat.

3. The fragmented media model will lead to more tailored advertising.

"What we are sure about is that this recession will last longer than previous ones due to a steeper downturn and that the impact on consumer spending will be much steeper than in the past."

Hubspot, the software firm, has released its latest State of the Twittersphere report and there are encouraging signs for avid supporters of the 140-character service. Usage continues to grow at a staggering rate and a healthy number of users tend to be committed and consistent.

Then again, there are distressing indices, too. For instance,  52.7% of users have no followers and 55.5% aren't following anyone,  and nearly 45% are on Twitter but have never Tweeted. Roughly nine per cent of all accounts are basically inactive.

It's clear, too, that 140 characters is a little crowded. Hubspot found a lot of people cramming their messages into every available crevice. The service is used primarily during the day and the average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738.

Howard Kurtz, the media writer for The Washington Post and host on CNN, writes today that Twitter is no longer for the ultra-hip.

It's becoming a conventional tool of communication and needs to be treated far more seriously as a way in which one can gauge public opinion and tap into public discourse.

Kurtz writes of his own experiences in the Twitterverse and concludes that it's becoming a great resource to hear from people whose opinions you value and from people whose opinions will surprise.

"Twitter has its tedious side," he writes. "I don't have something fascinating to say every few minutes, and neither does anyone else. But in this era of corporate downsizing, journalists had better get good at making friends."