New initiatives seems to be the key phrase for Yahoo Inc's end of the year rush. On Monday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company unveiled a tweeked version of its news service by adding a blog search to enrich its experience.

A keyword search for regular online news will now include a list of blogs of pertaining relevance which will be displayed in a box on the right side of the main Yahoo News results. The new search also taps into Flickr huge collection of grassroots images, Flickr making them available to users wanting to view only blog results.

Unlike Google mainstream news search tool which focuses exclusively on mainstream media, Yahoo's News search sifts through blogs giving readers a chance to choose whether to read from mainstream media or from grassroots news sources.

Yahoo's latest addition is easy to use and access. Just go to Yahoo News and type in a topic of interest; next to the relevant breaking news results appearing in the main content column, a set of related blog posts will be displayed on a thin vertical column on the right side of the screen. By cliking on the "more blog results" link at bottom of the blog results column, Blogs become the main source of news results replacing traditional mainstream news. A more than visual metaphor of the role and importance blogs are increasingly playing as relevant news sources.