The journalist has to first have a Google account that’s linked to their articles, and when that’s the case, Google News will show the journalist’s Google account profile photo along with information about his/her from Google+ — how many followers and an “Add to circles” button. There’s also a link on the journalist’s name but, rather than linking to his/her primary website, the link points to the Google+ profile.
It’s very similar to the changes Google made last week to how it displays rel=author markup in regular Google.com search results, and I suspect it’s going to open up Google to more charges that it’s promoting its own services/properties in search results.
Read the full piece at searchengineland.com
