The writer works in service of story and idea and always in service of the reader.

WSJ: Word Craft: Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd on Good Prose

And the closing of a service like Google Reader is teaching consumers that they may need to pony up a few bucks for the third-party version that replaces it.

FORBES: What Google Reader Could Learn From The Veronica Mars Kickstarter

Among the products Google just announced it plans to sunset (read: kill off), beloved feed-reading service Google Reader is now on the chopping block.

FORBES: Google's Strange Attack On Bloggers And The Public Internet: The Massive Reaction To Reader Shutdown

One risk: the more features Twitter piles onto its service, the greater the risk Twitter could become like Google Reader.

FORBES: Twitter: Now In Concentrated Form

Book reviewers are an essential part of the publishing ecosystem, acting as a matchmaking service between author and reader.

FORBES: Who Reviews The Reviewers?

There are third-party apps for feed-reading, but Google Reader remains both the dominant client and nearly the only back-end syncing service underpinning the entire RSS experience (a position the company actively pursued).

FORBES: What Google Reader Could Learn From The Veronica Mars Kickstarter