Doc Searles writes: “I already have a dependency on Google News, without which I wouldn’t have found the last three links in the item above.”

Me too. Noogle makes writing about the news a completely different and more interesting game.

In months of scouting, I’ve never found a Drudge with a business focus. Now this page serves me.

You can do the same yourself with agriculture, sex, the NFL. But why not get more specific? There’s the Cleveland Browns, mutiple sclerosis, NRA or even the Google itself.

Of course, Google can probably never (in the next five years?) filter out the crud and provide the necessary context. Which leaves a huge amount of room for bloggers to add value.

Noogle may create a wonderful opportunity for bloggers to refine and interpret the spew of news. Energy that went into crawling the web can now be devoted entirely to thinking and writing about the product of that crawling.

When Google.News (aka Noogle) pulled an obscure ABCNews.com article on Kashmiri violence onto its front page, the site got 500 referrals in ten minutes, according to Staci Kramer. (The Kashmire article had not made the front of ABCnews.com.)

Millionaire and aspiring LA publishing mogul Dick Riordan is a “rebel without a blog,” quips this article.

Hell, why doesn’t Riordan stop putzing around and just pay the LAEXAMINER team $300,000 a year to cover five journo salaries? Three scribes would report, with the other two copyediting and blogging.

Riordan could be battering the LAT next week rather than sometime in 2004. He could turn a profit quicker with far lower risk and, more importantly, have a bigger impact on LA life.

(Looking for further thoughts on the idiocy of funding a newpaper rather than a weblog swat team, Riordan should read this post, and this, and… in fact, he should read this whole blog.)

Forbes shuts ASAP, its 10-year-old print and web magazine about the digital economy. “There is no market for a dedicated new-economy publication,” says a spokeswoman.

I guess that depends on how you define the words “market” and “publication.” Yes, it may be uneconomical to cover the digital “As Soon As Possible” economy in a quarterly print publication. And if by “market” you mean $500 million a year, yes, that doesn’t exist today.

In fact, “dedicated new economy publications” like 80211b, Tom’s Hardware Guide, Slashdot and The Register seem to be doing OK. Perhaps the truth about the nimble digital economy is best reported by nimble digital Davids, not lumbering print Goliaths.

Ironically, ASAP’s last issue includes an article by blogger Greg Beato quoting the operator of DavidLynch.com, a site which more than covers its expenses of $30-40,000 a month through membership and sponsorship fees. “Eventually, small guys like us are going to prove that you can make money doing this…”

I hope ASAP’s eight laid off staffers can find themselves a home where they belong: on the Internet.

John Motavalli interviewed by IWantMedia: “For the most part, editors at the big magazines stayed away from [the Internet]. So the major DNA that went into producing the magazine didn’t have much to do with the Web product. When I worked at Hachette New Media, I never once saw an editor from any of the magazines set foot on our floor.”

After visiting the Jeff Jarvis writes: Internet World trade show yesterday, “This year’s show is only a quarter the size of last year’s. It is pathetic. It is a physical embodiment of the word ‘nevermind.’ The show can’t even fill one room. AOL has the biggest booth and it is small; Real and Sprint are there; Microsoft has a small booth just so they can say they have one; Yahoo has a booth smaller than a Silicon Valley cubicle.”

Ironically, the show’s tagline, “Grow Your Revenue and Operate More Efficiently through Internet Technology” has never been truer than today. It’s just that the companies who best benefit from the Internet are too new or small or cheap to pony up for a ticket at the “low price” of $995 and are instead busy learning online.

Clark G. Gilbert, protege of disruptive technology guru Clayton Christensen, has been scrutinizing how newpapers operate online. He says, “the most disturbing thing is that newspapers now appear to be focused on replacing their high-margin business of print classifieds with the lower-margin business of online classifieds. If that’s all they’re doing with their online operations, we’d suggest that they shut them down tomorrow. The more important segment to tap is the area of new growth that the Internet has made possible, populated by new customers altogether.”

Surveying the evil swap that killed two newspapers yesterday, Ken Layne writes “I really, truly hate the newspaper business. Too bad I don’t have any other skills. Maybe it’s time to join the dockworker union and make $150,000 a year for scratching my ass and wrecking U.S./Asia trade.”

Olivier has dropped from #2 to #7 in Google. He wonders: is Google braking blogs? Tony Pierce, once #1 for Tony, is now #11. I see Dave Winer has the same symptoms. David Weinberger notes that he has plummeted from #6 to #25, supplanted by namesakes like David Bowie, David Lynch, David Gray, David Brin, David Grisman, Harry and David.

Inspired, I just spent a couple of minutes looking for myself among the Henry clan. After 6 pages, I gave up. Note to self: create an app allowing bloggers to track their Google status.