American newspapers must use social networks to reconnect with audience

The Nieman Journalism Lab has called upon American newspaper publishers to "build a social network, a community, around the news" so as to "reconnect with your audience."

Inspired by a Pew project's discovery that 35% of adult internet users now have a profile on an online social network site, the article insists that "you need to be where your customers are and interact with them as they prefer to interact." The equivalent figure in 2005 was just 8%.

Some newspapers are already experimenting with social networking, but many of these need further development in order to be effective. Melinda Gipson of Newzmaven suggests scrapping these altogether in favour of leveraging and engaging existing social media sites such as Facebook, which already have a vast amount of users.

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab via IFRA