The question here is the lifespan of he "news", not how you classify their support (paper vs. internet, search vs. non-search etc). Traditionally this lifespan was limited to a few days while the said newspaper was on the stands. After that, access to those news was becoming cumbersome, i.e. like in having to go to the library and manually scroll through miles of archived microfiche. This 2 tiers system (news stands vs. microfiche) was ensuring that, while the information was still retained, you were practically "forgotten" and "out of the news" for the purpose of daily life. Obviously a newspaper could have elected to later regurgitate the same news and publish them again on the front page; however, they couldn't do this forever (you being on the front page for months for exactly the same news may have ended in a harassment lawsuit).

With the advent of internet, there's only one tier of "archiving", i.e. those news are always one search/click away from the public, making them "front page" for ever.

Because of the nature of their work. They make public appearances, where they address the public. Any news related to these are of public importance. OTOH what they do in their backyard is not addressed to the public and shouldn't be in the news unless they're doing something illegal.

Corrected for you: "some newspapers publish intensely personal information about public servants and celebrities". The average guy (like the one in the OP) does not expect that "intensely personal information" is published on internet and made searchable by a popular engine. If you're not a public figure, a rock start or on FBI/Interpol 10 most wanted list, you shouldn't be on internet without your knowledge and approval.

Otherwise as far as I am aware the only way to stop "mischief" is to turn the Internet into a trusted network.

Not this won't really work, what would you do, after verifying the identity of the other party and comparing with your whitelist you would assume that it's "trusted" and thus well behaved citizen. Which may not be true (compromised host with a trojan sending malformed packets etc).

The only robust method would be to assume at protocol design phase that the stack would be connected to a hostile environment where every single packet could be mischievous. "Trust no one" and design to not crash in such conditions.

Still a valid point. Why should personal info appear on internet when it was never your intention to put it there? And on top of it being searchable by name?

How about a minimal protection like the search engine eliminating all names from the searchable index, unless, of course, at indexing time they were found to be enclosed in special HTML tags saying "this name should be indexed"? If the information gets unintentionally on the net, most likely the tags won't be there. On the other hand if you create a page that you intentionally want to come up when searching for "Joe Doe", then you enclose the Joe Doe name within the appropriate tags. Google has for example mechanisms to not let you search for credit card numbers (or something resembling them), how about the same protection for names?

So, what do you think should happen if, for example, you're searching for your name and find that the engine provides a link to some (hacked/stolen) database, complete with address, SSN, credit history, credit card numbers, medical records or similar data? Sure, it was the hackers that initially broke the law by stealing and then "making available" that data, but how about the search engine owners responsibility? Since they now provide an easy, direct path to the data, wouldn't it be "aiding and abetting" the public dissemination of such data? Combined with their refusal to remove the link ("we don't have such process"), how would it look like?