The Evening Leader is now putting its news straight onto facebook.

Like many news and media organisations the North Wales-based Evening Leader has experimented with several social networking sites, including the phenomenally successful facebook.com.

The Leader already has a popular public group on the site, as well as a simple profile page, but now all the news and sports stories that appear online at www.eveningleader.co.uk are published on facebook.

Head of digital news for the Evening Leader, Christian Dunn, explained: "We use one of the applications within facebook to display RSS feeds from our own site.

"These give the headlines and outline of the story and link straight back to www.eveningleader.co.uk if people want to find out any more.

"It means that people can find out about the local news and sport while they are spending time in facebook.

"They might never think of going to www.eveningleader.co.uk but they're still interested in what's going on in their area."

Deputy editor Martin Wright said: "facebook is the UK's most popular social networking site - so if that's where people are spending their time online we should be there too."

As well as the innovative way of getting news published on facebook the Evening Leader's profile page also allows readers to take part in polls, comment on local issues and be alerted to breaking news throughout the day.

Editor-in-chief Barrie Jones said: "We constantly want to be proactive in attracting readers to our website.

"Sitting back and expecting them to come to us is not an option – we need to go and get them.

"Hopefully once they've visited they'll be impressed with what we offer online and come back again."