The rotten economy isn’t killing newspapers, it’s just pulling the proverbial plug on a senescent patient. How else to explain a study by the Bivings Group — referenced here on the blog at the Knight Digital Media Center — that found that “only 10 percent of the top 100 newspaper sites in the United States had 
implemented social networking tools.”
The Washington Post, always ambitious in the realm of online media, is trying something interesting: a wiki-like directory of government power players called WhoRunsGov.com. It’s in the very early stages; as of this writing, its section on House staff only contains four profiles. To succeed, The Post will have to build up a critical mass of users to the point where it becomes a professional embarrassment not to have a profile up.
Even if it does succeed, the question is “So what?” A searchable, interactive database of government workers may be a killer app for journalists looking for sources and D.C. (read more…)
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