IPTC SpectrumNo 18 December 2003 IPTC - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR NEWS

EventsML

ProgramGuideML SportsML Weather Data

NewsML NITF Putting IPTC Standards Together IPTC Members 2003 ol soito fNwppr A Fac)- (France) - WAN - Newspapers - of (USA) Association - World UPI - International Press United - - (Italy) (Sweden) TMNEWS-APCOM - TT - Telegrambyrå Tidningarnas - (UK) Limited Reuters - (UK) Newswire PR - (USA) Pinnacor - (UK) Ltd News - PA (USA) - Company (USA) Times - York NAA New - America of Association Newspaper - (Japan) Services News - Kyodo (Japan) - NSK - - (Switzerland) Association Keystone Editors & Publishers - Newspaper (Sweden) Japan Agencies Press of Alliance - European (USA) Company & Jones Dow - - (USA) (Germany) Inc - Dialog/NewsEdge dpa - GmbH Presse-Agentur Deutsche - Kong) (Hong CINTEC - (Canada) Press Canadian - (Canada) Ltd NewsWire Canada - - (USA) (Austria) Wire - Business APA - Agentur - Presse (USA) Austria - AP - Press Associated - (UK) Limited Mediabase Associated - (Switzerland) - - (Italy) SDA/ATS ANSA - S.A - Suisse (France) Télégraphique - Agence afp - Presse France Agence gneBla(egu)- (Belgium) Belga Agence - (UK) Ltd News AFX M emSltosIc(S)- (USA) Inc Solutions Team XML - (UK) RivCom - (Denmark) I's Bureau Ritzau - (France) RelaxNews - (Finland) Tietotoimisto Suomen Oy - (Canada) Inc Technologies Nstein - (Norway) AB Telegrambyrå Norsk - (Sweden) - - (UK) MCM NewsLink - - (Hungary) Market - Content MTI Media - Rt Iroda Távírati Magyar - (Italy) Reppublica La - (Russia) ITAR-TASS - (USA) Software Inxight - (Germany) IFRA - (Japan) Japan - IBM - (Croatia) HINA - (USA) Baseview and Harris - (UK) Ltd Fingerpost - (Japan) Ltd Co EAST - (Denmark) Europe CCI - (USA) Inc BearingPoint, - (Australia) Command Media - Atex (Greece) - Agency Netherlands) News (The Athens - ANA, ANP - Persbureau Nederlands Algemeen - (Spain) EFE Agencia www.ansa.it www.rivcom.com www.hina.hr www.wire2.com www.pinnacor.com www.ifra.com oiaigMembers Nominating soit Members Associate www.pa.press.net www.prnewswire.co.uk www.afxnews.com www.fingerpost.co.uk www.jp.ibm.com www.relaxnews.com www.itar-tass.com www.repubblica.it www.efe.es www.reuters.com www.est.co.jp/english/index.html www.businesswire.com www.cintec.cuhk.edu.hk www.ccieurope.com www.inxight.com www.keystone.ch www.apcom.it www.belga.be www.bearingpoint.com www.cp.org www.harrisbaseview.com www.newsedge.com www.ritzau.dk www.dowjones.com www.kyodo.co.jp www.ap.org www.xmlteam.com www.newswire.ca www.nytimes.com www.atex.com www.ntb.no www.nstein.com www.stt.fi/ www.mediabase.co.uk www.ana.gr www.afp.com www.upi.com www.apa.at www.mcon.com www.mti.hu www.tt.se www.pressalliance.com www.naa.org www.dpa.de www.wan-press.org www.sda-ats.ch www.anp.nl www.pressnet.or.jp International Press Telecommunications Council Contents

Chairman: Organisation John Iobst A Year Of Change 4 Honorary Treasurer: Management Commitee 4 Henrik Stadler Vice Chairmen: IPTC Membership 5 Stéphane Guérillot; Naoshi Hashimoto; Pressure Group 5 Geoffrey Haynes; Rudi Horvath; Peter Müller; IPTC Directory 6 Klaus Sprick. Adding New Colours To IPTC’s Work 6 Managing Director: Open Discussion 8 Michael Steidl Editor: Final Farewell 8 Hugh Johnstone PR Committee Published by the Spreading The Message 9 International Press Telecommunications Council Standards Royal Albert House Sheet Street Putting It All Together 10 Windsor News Standards Survey 11 Berkshire SL4 1BE IPTC Namespace 12 England News Summit 2003 13 Tel: +44(0)1753 705051 Fax: +44(0)1753 831541 NewsML Support E-mail: [email protected] Improving The Appeal 14 [email protected] NewsML Requirements 14 Web Pages: www.iptc.org NewsML V2 Documentation 15 www.newsml.org www.nitf.org Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå 15 www.sportsml.com www. programguideml.org News Metadata What The News Is About 16 Criteria For New SRS Entries 16 Scene TopicSet 17

NITF Incremental Improvements 18 Ruby 19

CCI Europe 19

Special Content Dedicated News Structures 20 SportsML 21 ProgramGuideML 22 Fantasy Sports 23

Cover: Development Ritzau Bureau I’s 23 of an integrated IPTC Standards Suite will bring all News Management the existing XML- based standards together. Under Control 24 ORGANISATION Management Committee A Year of Board of Directors of IPTC (as a company) with responsibility for Change management and development of the organisation. The launch of a major work programme with the aim of producing an Web site: www.iptc.org integrated family of standards for the news industry, the release of new and updated standards, and changes associated with the John Iobst appointment of a new Managing Director have made the past year (NAA) particularly busy and productive. Chairman he main activity of IPTC remains the de- Standards Committee session to Tvelopment of standards for the news in- summarise the achievements and give for- dustry and a thorough reappraisal of the mal approval to agreed actions - such as re- Henrik Stadler aims and scope of this work has resulted in lease of a new standard. In addition the (TT) a challenging new programme. This envis- Public Relations Committee meets to dis- Honorary Treasurer ages the development of a new family of cuss the promotion of IPTC in general, and standards - generally based on the existing the current activities in particular. standards and projects but with a high level These additional activities have placed a of integration. significant burden on the delegates, and Stéphane Guérillot, To date three XML-based standards especially on the Working Party Chairmen. (afp) have been formally approved and released: The success of IPTC’s activities very much Vice-Chairman NewsML; the NITF; and SportsML. In addi- depends on the work put in by individual tion ProgramGuideML has been made delegates - and the willingness of their available in draft form, while work is in hand companies to let them make the commit- on programs to handle structured content ment is an indication of the importance Naoshi Hashimoto covering various interest areas. It is envis- placed on the results. However, particular (NSK) aged that the core of the new standards problems can arise if a Chairman is unable Vice-Chairnman family will be a revised NewsML. The other to attend a Meeting, and to help with this it standards will have a consistent design for was decided to appoint Vice-Chairs for use with NewsML and a high level of com- each of the Working Parties. Geoffrey Haynes monality - though they will remain inde- Since the deputies have to work closely (AP) pendent programs that can also be used in with the Chairmen the incumbents were en- Vice-Chairman a stand-alone mode. couraged to make their own nominations, subject to approval by the Standards Com- Standards Steering mittee. This resulted in appointment of a A new Standards Steering Committee has first group of Vice-Chairs being appointed Rudi Horvath been formed to plan and oversee the devel- at the Autumn Meeting - details of the dele- (APA) Vice-Chairman opment process and consists of the Chair- gates who have taken on these responsi- men of the Individual Working Parties, bilities are given in the Working Party along with the IPTC Chairman, the Chair- reports on the following pages. men of the Standards and Public Relations Peter Müller Committees and the IPTC Managing Direc- Continuing support (STS/ATS) tor. Meetings of this group are held (in per- Although the development activity is now Vice-Chairman son or by teleconference) prior to the main being focused on the new standards family, IPTC Meetings - and at other times as ap- it is recognised that existing standards and propriate - to work on the overall plan and projects need continuing support to meet establish priorities for the forthcoming ses- industry requirements. This work remains a Klaus Sprick (dpa) sions. significant feature of the three main Meet- Vice-Chairman Associated with this, a review of working ings, and of the efforts put in by delegates practices resulted in a revised structure for in preparing proposals for discussion at the the three main Meetings. These now start Meetings. with an initial Standards Committee ses- The 2003 Spring Meeting was held in Michael Steidl sion which provides an outline of the work it Nice and saw the formal approval and re- IPTC Managing is hoped to carry out and an overview of lease of SportsML V.1, which had been re- Director how these activities fit into the general stan- leased in draft form at the Autumn 2002 dards development plan. Individual Work- Meeting. This standard has gained rapid ing Party meetings follow, with a concluding acceptance, with some users launching

4 IPTC Spectrum 2003 ORGANISATION systems based on the draft release. It supplier CCI Europe (see page 19), the on metadata (which will also form a major seems likely that SportsML will become Danish News Agency Ritzau I’s (page 23) element of the new family of standards). one of the more widely-used IPTC stan- and the Swedish Newsagency Tidningar- This included a substantial set of additions dards, having applications beyond the nass Telegraymbyrå (page 15). The hospi- and enhancements to the IPTC Subject news industry - it may even become used tality of the hosts and the efficient Reference System (SRS), implementation by the general public. organisation made the meeting both pro- of revised working practices designed to Structured content - like SportsML - is ductive and very enjoyable. simplify and speed up additions to the SRS, proving a major area of interest. The NSK Welcoming delegates to Aarhus, Mr Uffe and the production of a new NewsML Top- (Nihon Shinbun Kyokai - the Japan News- Riis Sorensen, Managing Director and icSet for describing pictures paper Publishers & Editors Association) Editor-in-Chief of Ritzaus Bureau high- Following established practice, working has undertaken a major initiative to develop lighted the importance of technical devel- sessions at the Meetings were comple- a television and radio programme listings opment for the news industry, with smaller mented by a series of guest speakers and system. This effort resulted in release of a agencies often being early developers and draft Version 1 of the standard - now named implementers. ProgramGuideML - at the Autumn Meeting. Work is also under way on programs to deal Internet connections Pressure with events (EventsML) and Weather Data. An innovation at the Aarhus Meeting was Further areas such as election data have the provision of Internet connections in the been investigated, while a watching brief meeting room, which were available Group has been kept on the activities of other bod- throughout the day. This made it possible ies working on standards for industries that for new documents to be directly circulated One of the original activities of generate significant amounts of news, to delegates, who were also able to keep in IPTC was as a pressure group to these include the financial markets and touch with their organisations and deal with represent the interests of the news public relations. urgent matters. industry and still carries out this The ProgramGuideML project is only one In addition it proved possible to arrange a function when appropriate. aspect of the activities of the NSK NewsML web meeting so the Chairman of the NITF This was the case when it was Team, which was established to encourage Working Party (who had been unable to get learnt that the ISO (International understanding and use of the standard. An- to Aarhus) could conduct the session from Organisation for Standards) other organisation active in encouraging America. Following this success similar fa- appeared to be planning to charge the wider use of NewsML is CINTEC (the cilities were arranged for the Autumn Meet- royalties for the commercial use of Hong Kong Centre for Innovation and ing, and will probably become a regular ISO codes that represent languages, Technology) with the Chinese NewsML feature of Meetings (when technically pos- countries and currencies. Community. This was set up to establish sible). In response to this a letter was sent and promote a local NewsML standard and Third of the main Meetings - the Autumn by the Management Committee to supporting tools for Hong Kong, and has Meeting - was held in Leipzig, Germany, protest against the proposal. This also been active in promoting NewsML in and in addition to release of the draft Pro- letter explained that the IPTC creates China. gramGuideML V.1, there was approval for and maintains standards for The 2003 Annual General Meeting was an update NITF V3.2 and for NewsML international news exchange, and Held in Aarhus, Denmark, at the invitation V1.2. that it is policy of the IPTC to use ISO of three Scandinavian Members - systems All three Meetings saw substantial work and other publicly available standards its own guidelines wherever possible. It went on to say that the new commercial policy of ISO would have IPTC Membership a severe negative impact on the credibility of industry standards IPTC was established in 1965 by a group of news organisations to safeguard organisations like IPTC, since the the telecommunications interests of the World’s Press, but for the past organisation would provide a twenty-five years activities had been mainly concerned with the development standard in which implementation of technical standards for the interchange of news data. implies royalty fees to a third party Founder members included the Alliance Européenne des Agences de Presse, and would not be “free” in its use. In ANPA (now NAA), FIEJ (now WAN) and the North American News Agencies (a addition it was pointed out that such joint committee of Associated Press, Canadian Press and United Press charges could result in damage to International) all of who are still members the overall trust in standardisation. There are two types of IPTC membership: Following representations from a Nominating membership is open to organisations and companies concerned number of organisations, including with news collection, distribution and publishing. Nominating members have formal the IPTC, the ISO stated that they voting rights and may send up to 3 delegates to a meeting. intended to continue with their Associate membership is mainly intended for system vendors (software and established practice of allowing free equipment) supporting the news industry. However, it is also open to open to news use of its country, currency and organisations and companies. Associate members pay a reduced membership fee language codes in commercial and but do not have formal voting rights and can send one attendee to meetings. other applications, and that there was no proposal currently being A response form for membership enquiries in included in the “How to Join” section considered by ISO to impose on the IPTC Web site - www.iptc.org. charges for use of these codes.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 5 ORGANISATION presentations. Keynote speech at the AGM tinue to support the work of the was on the theme “The media future has organisation. he day before my first IPTC begun - but where are we going” and was Following normal practice the remaining meeting in October 2002 I met given by Ulrik Haagerup, Editor-in-Chief, Committee members stood for re-election Tthe IPTC Chairman, John Iobst, NORDJYSKE Media. The AGM also saw a and were all returned unopposed, with at the entrance to the famous Van thought-provoking overview of Pervasive John Iobst (NAA) remaining for his second Gogh museum in Amsterdam. After Computing by Preben Mejer, senior Vice year as Chairman. Since there were two a warm welcome we became President TDC, and an outline of the com- unfilled vacancies the Management Com- immersed in Vincent’s magic, mercial effects of third generation mobile mittee decided to co-opt Henrik Stadler learning that he started as a phone networks from Ulrik Cahn, Content (who agreed to serve as Honorary Treas- talented but not extraordinary Manager for service provider “3". urer) and Geoffrey Haynes (AP) as addi- painter. But after some years of Over the past years there has been in- tional members - see the side panel on practice he changed his traditional creasing interest in systems for automatic page 3 for further details. style and added a range of categorisation and this was continued with The search for a new Managing Director extraordinary colours to painting. I a presentation on GammaWare News Edi- was a major task for the Management have a reprint of Van Gogh’s tion (from Gammasite - www.gamma- Committee in 2002 and resulted in Michael painting of his house in Arles in my site.com). An overview of Knowledge Steidl being appointed to take on the post at home-office - his blazing blue sky, Management and Topic Maps was pro- the start of 2003, with the actual handover the sparkling yellow of the walls vided by Gerhard Köhn from empolis taking place during January. Michael is are, to some extent, the background GmbH (www.empolis.com) who also dem- Austrian and although he works from Vi- to my work. onstrated the empolis knowledge suite. enna for much of the time, IPTC continues This might be a metaphor for the big Other presentations included the Transtel to be a British registered company and re- task I jumped into: not to reinvent the nm-Fusion Content Management System tains the established Windsor address. wheel of running the IPTC office, well (www.transtel.com) and an explanation of The level and range of developments developed, maintained, and handed the way XML is being integrated into Micro- meant that 2003 was particularly challeng- over by David Allen, but to add some soft Word 2003 by Ray Stevenson, Project ing - especially as the first year for a new extra shades of colour to IPTC’s image Manager for Word. Managing Director and Michael Steidl gives as a major player for standards in the his personal overview alongside. news industry. Management An increased level of activities and the Overall management of IPTC is the respon- growing number of standards, with their as- Complex operations sibility of the Management Committee and sociated documentation, has made heavy Yes, I had to learn the ropes first. this saw a number of changes during the demands on the infrastructure and an ex- IPTC operations are complex and it’s year. At the AGM, Walter Grolimund (Key- tensive review of the systems being used like conquering an unknown island: stone) stood down as Honorary Treasurer, has been undertaken by the Managing Di- region after region had to be explored having filled the position for some years, al- rector. Amongst other things this has re- and all details of operation had to be though he made it clear that he would con- sulted in a new IPTC continued on page 8 made transparent, for me and to others. Preparing and providing the required resources for a meeting, taking minutes that reproduce the key IPTC Directory points of the discussions, handling the finances, and last but not least Valid for all IPTC standards and supporting and co-ordinating the associated documentation the IPTC technical work of IPTC was Common Directory Tree can be occasionally really breathtaking and I stored anywhere in a file system. have to admit it was a steep learning The root “IPTC” directory contains: curve. “catalog” - mainly for NewsML Now I have almost made it around applications; the one-year-clock and the dust has “topicset” - for TopicSet files; settled. Although the year 2003 is only “tools” - software tools (such as the a short period in the almost four Subject Codes viewer) provided by decades of IPTC’s existence there IPTC: were some events during the year that metadata - such as the Subject might change this organisation. Reference System; and individual sub-directories for New ways of working each standard, in turn containing First, I think of the Washington, DC sub-directories for each version of meeting of the Working Party the standard. These sub-directories Chairmen in April to discuss new ways contain the relevant specifications, of developing and maintaining our such as a DTD (or XSD), standards. These appear quite documentation and examples. necessary to me: in the past decades In the example here the NewsML IPTC usually developed and sub directory is opened to show the maintained one to two standards in version subdirectories, which have parallel; IPTC 7901 was succeeded by also been opened. IIM; and this was followed by NITF

6 IPTC Spectrum 2003 ORGANISATION Adding new colours to IPTC’s work

Understanding the needs and establishing the structures needed to support the, very challenging, development plan for IPTC standards has been a major task for new Managing Director Michael Steidl. Here he reviews his first year in the job, and looks forward to the excitement continuing. over a period of almost 15 years. But now the XML based standards of IPTC as a extent controversially, at the Autumn three standards - NITF, NewsML, family in the future. As in a family, each meeting but I consider IPTC as a whole SportsML - have been developed and member has his or her distinct position made the best out of it. approved in a time span of about eight and role those of our standards have to The opportunity was taken to show that years. These three standards are all be assessed and specified. we consider ourselves as the major currently active and an additional three I think we are still at the beginning of provider of standards with full are under development - this road but our ambitious aim is to have commitment to the requirements of the ProgramGuideML, EventsML and an this done by the AGM 2005. I consider news industry, and to have at the upcoming weather mark up. So soon we this as a major challenge since most Summit several Working Party Chairmen will have six active standards. standards were developed independently giving presentations on the great in the past and only limited consideration technical work that had been carried out TopicSets was given to interoperation. over the past few years. Similarly, the five sets of topics from the original Subject Reference System have Market considerations More exciting been extend to two dozen by the advent And there was a third major result from My second year with IPTC promises to of NewsML - and as we saw at the this meeting: Let us listen to the news be even more exciting than the first one Autumn meeting, new TopicSets are still industry and consider them as a market and my own primary goals are to being created. A final example: the total that shows acceptance of the IPTC encourage adding quality to our number of terms in the Subject Codes list standards by the extent that they are standards in terms of offering a has increased from about one hundred adopted. This was the mental kick-off for specification that is easy to implement; five years ago to a current set of more the Standards Survey that was started in to support adding “business case facets” than 1200 - and still counting. At the November and will be continued into the to our standards’ public image (making same time this large list is being new year. I hope IPTC will get valuable them attractive to more than the translated into more and more results from this and it will be a great technical experts); to improve the languages. opportunity for our organisation to draw marketing of our work - we have to the right conclusions from its evaluation. explain more of the features and Extended management But there were other spin-offs from this concepts to a focussed audience; and All of this can’t be done using the notion: the retooling of all IPTC web sites finally to help to manage our work in a methods of the eighties and nineties. So to make them easier to access and the way that tangible results can be shown there might be a new colour needed vast project to improve the in a reasonable timescale. called “extended management”. The documentation of NewsML to make it It is a thrilling perspective to see how introduction of project management easier to understand and implement. IPTC will implement the ambitious methodologies for the development of the Roadmap 2005 and how we, as an weather mark up is one step into this Standards Summit organisation primarily driven by direction. And implementing web based Another result from this extended volunteer workforce-Iamtheonly tools to ease world wide collaboration is perception of the news industry as a employee (and that part-time) - will be another demand from these expanded market for standards can be the able to make these goals real. I am duties. commitment to the News Standards eager to support all efforts put into this But there was another key result from Summit this December. This commitment and hope to keep up with the excellence the Washington meeting: Let’s consider was discussed extensively, and to some added to our standards in this process.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 7 ORGANISATION directory file structure and a document naming convention. A major effort has also been made to reinvigorate the various IPTC web sites, making them resource centres Open Discussion as well as major tools for the promotion of IPTC activities. Extensive use is being made of electronic discussion groups to encourage Fresh attention has been paid to the po- the interchange of technical information and matters of general interest. The tential for co-operation with other standards first group was established as part of the original NewsML development organisations, with a major initiative lead- process and is still very active with over 600 members. ing to a News Standards Summit arranged The NewsML group was followed closely by one dealing with the NITF which now in co-operation with other interested par- has more than 400 members. SportsML also attracts a lot of attention with over 200 ties. Aim of this summit was to look at the members, and has generated a series of sub-groups dealing with Horse and various standards available for news ex- Harness Racing, Olympic sports and Australian rules football. change, to see how they interacted, and to There are also groups for ProgramguideML and EventsML, but both of these examine compatibility. The requirements standards are still under development tend to be more specialised, and currently and views of users and implementers were have fewer members. also investigated. See the Standards Com- All of these groups are open to all interested parties on registration, but there is mittee report for further details. also a restricted IPTC Members group for discussion of internal matters. Addresses are as follows: Liaison IPTC Members - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-members (members only) Overall responsibility for liaison with other NewsML - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsml bodies lies with the Managing Director. NITF - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf However, guidelines have also been drawn SportsML - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml up to improve technical contacts with other - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-arf standards bodies and initial appointments - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-horse were made for representatives to work with - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-olympics OASIS, W3C and ATOM. These represen- ProgramGuideML - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProgramGuideML tatives act to convey details of IPTC deci- EventsML - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eventml-dev sions and actions; establish what the other standards bodies are doing; and carry out areas, with the aim of producing standards Running from the 25 to 28 May 2004 the specific tasks requested by the Standards with the widest possible application. Annual General Meeting is being held in Committee. Activity is set to continue at a high level in Hong Kong at the invitation of the Chinese IPTC is a members of OASIS (Organiza- 2004, with a sustained effort being needed NewsML Community (a part of CINTEC) tion for the Advancement of Structured In- to ensure success of the new standards de- The second Chinese NewsML Conference formation Standards- www.oasis- velopment process. In addition there are is being held on the day before the Meeting, open.org), which is a consortium of organi- special events associated with both the with a keynote speaker from IPTC and a sations and individuals that drives the de- Spring Meeting and the Annual General round-table discussion - it is hoped that as velopment, convergence and adoption of e- Meeting. The Spring Meeting is being held many AGM delegates as possible will also business standards. The OASIS technical in Athens from the 15 to 18 March 2004 take part in the Conference. agenda is set by the members and in addi- with the assistance of the Athens News Finally the Autumn Meeting is to be held tion to general liaison, steps are being Agency (ANA) and will include an extra day in Amsterdam - a city that has seen the taken to see if it is possible for IPTC to work when discussions with Olympic officials launch of several IPTC standards in recent more closely with OASIS in some interest have been arranged. years - from 6 to 8 October 2004. Final Farewell

The 2003 Spring Meeting saw a final farewell to David Allen with a special session of the Committee of the Whole being convened for a formal presentation. The presentation - made by IPTC Chairman John Iobst - was in two parts: a cut crystal rose bowl (see left) to provide a permanent and visible reminder of David’s time with IPTC; and a commemorative volume of the work of Ansel Adams (a photographer whose work David admires). A (much less formal!) Farewell Dinner was also held. With Klaus Sprick - the “longest serving” IPTC delegate - paying a personal tribute. Apparently David Allen found that being at an IPTC Meeting and having time to look around the town was a novel experience!

8 IPTC Spectrum 2003 PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public Relations Spreading the Committee Message Deals with all aspects of IPTC's public relations, with the aim of encouraging the Ensuring that IPTC’s activities and achievements receive proper wider use of IPTC standards recognition, beyond the immediate membership, is becoming more and attracting new members. important, especially as new standards are introduced.

major activity over the past year has vidual standards sites, when appropriate. Abeen a relaunch of the IPTC family of Attention has also been paid to web ad- websites with the aim of improving the dresses that are closely related to those of presentation of IPTC’s work - the planned IPTC sites. For example www.sportml.org Walter Barranger development of a new family of standards and www.sportml.com now connect directly (New York Times) was seen as giving this greater importance to the official www.sportsml.com site. Committee - and to make them a better source of infor- A series of Press Releases have been is- Chairman mation of users. sued, with regular releases following each There are now a series of IPTC sites with Meeting and others when activities justify the main www.iptc.org being comple- them. These releases are widely distrib- mented by www.newsml.org, www.nitf.org, uted by PR Newswire (who are Members) www.sportsml.com and www.program- while other members have also issued re- guideml.org. An important aim of the redes- leases related to the standards (and their ign was to ensure that the sites had a use of them) and to IPTC activities. The common appearance and structure. Mak- Press Releases are also made available ing the standards and associated docu- via the main IPTC web site, where they mentation more accessible and better form an archive that helps give a broad pic- explained was also a priority, with better ture of the organisations activities. navigation within each of the sites and be- tween the sites. First suggestions for the relaunch were made at the Spring Meeting with a small group of members and the Managing Direc- tor taking on the task. Initial proposals were discussed at the AGM, with a refined ver- sion presented and agreed on at the Autumn meeting. To help increase aware- ness of the standards members (and other users) can include links from suitable areas of their web sites back to the main IPTC site, and to the indi-

All the IPTC web sites have a common appearance and functionality.The top navigation bar allows easy access to the individual standards sites, while the side panel gives details of the current site contents.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 9 STANDARDS Standards Committee Putting It All Planning and supervision for the technical development of Together new standards and the review of existing standards, including formal approval for release. Response to developing market needs resulted in the decision to start work on a new Standards Suite, this will be based on the established standards but have a high degree of integration. Web sites: Revised working practices have been adopted to provide a sound www.iptc.org basis for the major effort that is now well under way. www.newsml.org www.nitf.org www.sportsml.com nsurprisingly, the standards developed An important part of the process is finding Uby IPTC start life as a solution to the out who the users of IPTC standards are (in www.programguideml.org specific needs of a group of members - who addition to the traditional base of the news have to provide the resources to produce industry), and exactly what use they are them - though care is taken during the de- making of the standards. To help with this a Discussion groups: velopment process to take account of the User Survey is being carried out - see panel http://groups.yahoo.com/ wider needs of the news industry. opposite. group/newsml While this approach has been successful in many ways it has the disadvantage that Co-operation http://groups.yahoo.com/ the individual standards tend to have been In addition technical co-operation with group/nitf produced in isolation, with the broader pic- other standards organisations with inter- http://groups.yahoo.com/ ture being obscured. Adoption of XML as a ests in the broader news industry has group/sportsml basis of recent work has helped provide a gained increasing importance. Accordingly, http://groups.yahoo.com/ degree of compatibility, and provision has IPTC initiated - and then cosponsored - a group/ProgramGuideML been made for recent standards to be used proposal for a News Standards Summit to http://groups.yahoo.com/ together - specifically with NITF, SportsML investigate the interaction and compatibility group/eventml-dev and ProgramGuideML content in NewsML, of the various standards available for ex- and with NITF news stories in SportsML. changing news - see page 13. However, it has become increasingly ap- Full appraisal of the results from the User parent that this approach has significant Survey and assessment of the potential for limitations, especially with growth in the co-operation with other standards organi- number of standards being produced and sations will take some time, but both of Stéphane Guérillot needing to be maintained - both as stan- these will play an important part in the (AFP) dards and in users’ systems. An extensive evolving IPTC standards Roadmap. Be- Committee review of the standards themselves, the cause of this, and other factors including Chairman ways they are used and how they work to- the level of available resources, it is recog- gether, along with anticipated requirements nised that the roadmap cannot be totally for further standards, resulted in an inte- fixed and will have to adapt to changing cir- grated Roadmap for future IPTC standards cumstances. development. The aim is to have the integrated IPTC Standards Suite ready for release in mid Roadmap 2005, with the individual standards being This is an ambitious plan with the overall made available as they are completed. For aim of integrating all the IPTC standards maximum flexibility these individual stan- into a consistent family that will make ap- dards will be self-contained and suitable for propriate use of the latest technologies. It is use in stand-alone mode as well forming a hoped that it will make implementation of part of the Suite. the standards easier, and will help widen use of the standards. Overall guidance of Core program this process is being provided by the new Core of the new standards family will be Standards Steering Committee (see the NewsML V2 - this is likely to be a simplified Organisation section - page 4 - for more de- version of the existing standard, though the tails), though most of the work will have to details have yet to be established, More in- be carried out by the individual Working formation on the thinking behind NewsML Parties and the Standards Committee it- V2 is given in the NewsML Support section self. on pages 14-15.

10 IPTC Spectrum 2003 STANDARDS

The rest of the family will be revised ver- sions of the other existing IPTC standards (XML-based) - along with projects already under way - as follows: News Standards Survey The NITF is well established and it is seen as important to ensure that the needs In order to ensure that the current IPTC standards development programme of the large existing user base are taken meets the real needs of users it is important to establish who the users are, into account. It appears that only relatively and what they need from the standards. minor changes will be needed to allow full One of the ways this information is being obtained is the News Standards integration into the new family, with the Survey, which is open to everyone in the news industry. The Survey is designed to main requirement being to provide a series establish the business areas the respondents come from, the standards that they of examples of how this can be achieved. are currently using and their familiarity with the existing IPTC standards. ProgramGuideML V1.0 is planned for re- A series of specific questions are included to establish what, if any, barriers are lease in Spring 2004 and has been specifi- restricting implementation of NewsML and NITF systems - from the steep XML cally designed for use with NewsML. learning curve, through the complexity of the standards and documentation to the SportsML has been well received and lack of applications and tools. These are complemented by open questions to try has a growing user base. Integration with and find out what features of NewsML, SportsML, and NITF are most liked, and the other standards should make the instal- which features are liked least. Interest in, and use of, the Subject Reference lation and maintenance of SportsML appli- System (SRS) is also investigated. cations easier. Extension to cover further News agencies, news publishers, and other users (or potential users) of the sports is under way and care will be taken standards are asked to help shape the future of news standards by taking part in to ensure that any plug-ins for these sports the survey which runs until the end of January 2004. Respondents who include conform to the established structure. contact information in their reply will be sent a summary of the results. EventsML, and a system to handle Weather Data, are both under develop- ment, so can be designed to ensure full compatibility with the new standards family. The News Standards Survey is at Metadata www.iptc.org/survey Metadata is seen as a key element of the IPTC Standards Suite and it is planned to and will only take a few minutes to complete. develop a common set of metadata for all standards, with a consistent method being used to represent it. In addition the meta- and IPTC - which investigated the transla- support for the use of XML namespaces; data structure for the standards will be tion of DTDs (Document Type Definition) to and the fact the syntax is XML-based, al- opened up to allow it to handle third-party XML Schemas. Specific advantages identi- lowing the use of standard tools. content. Development of the Subject Refer- fied for XML Schemas included: the ability The main aim of the report was to investi- ence System is seen as continuing as bef- to apply strong typing to attributes and ele- gate the feasibility of using available XML ore, as it will not have a direct impact on the ments - for example ensuring that date in- editing tools to convert the existing IPTC integration process. formation conforms to a standard format; pro- Overall target of the Standards Roadmap is to produce an integrated XML Schemas vision for deriving alter- standards suite and release it in mid to late 2005.This will involve Consideration has also been given to the nate content models producing revised versions of the existing standards - NewsML, the NITF, and SportsML, while ProgramGuideML is planned for final format of the specification files that will be depending on content - approval and release in Summer 2004.In addition, new projects such used for the Standards Suite. so that it would possi- as EventsML and the Weather Data system will be designed as part The use of XML Schemas is seen as of- ble to let sports result of the suite. fering a number of significant advantages elements have differ- An outline timescale is shown below, though it is recognised that this and this was considered in a report - co- ent structures depend- may have change in response to external factors - ranging from user sponsored by Tidningarnas Telegrambyå ing on the type of sport; demands to the resources available to carry out the work.

EventsML/Weather Data Timescales to be established

ProgramGuideML V1 release IPTC Standards SportsML V2 beta release V2 release Suite

NITF V4 beta release V4 release released

NewsML V2 draft V2 beta release V2 release

Spring 2004 Summer 2004 Autumn 2004 Spring 2005 Summer 2005

IPTC Spectrum 2003 11 STANDARDS

DTDs into XML Schemas. It appears that this could be a practical approach, with the output being manually edited to give con- sistence and make full use of the potential - such as the introduction of type checking. Although a final decision has not yet been taken it seems likely that the new family of standards will be expressed as XML Sche- mas, rather than as DTDs. These will be the reference versions, though DTD versions (with reduced functionality) may also be of- fered. If there is sufficient demand an effort may also be made to produce XML Schemas for the existing standards. However, in this case it would not be appropriate to use all the available features as there would be a danger of the XML Schema version reject- tion of Project Management Methodologies Filename for the NewsML functional ing an instance that the (reference) DTD to IPTC standards development, with the specification, showing how it is built up from considers valid. This could occur, for exam- aim being to establish a consistent ap- individual elements of the Document Name ple, if a date had the wrong format as this Set.The structure makes it straightforward to proach with better control of the individual distinguish between different releases of could not be checked by the DTD. steps. A simple implementation is being standards. adopted with a new Project Review Com- A similar naming convention is adopted for Naming Convention mittee being established to oversee appli- standards documentation.Again the structure As the number of standards increases - cation. In order to assess the benefits - and makes it straightforward to distinguish between with different releases and, possibly, varia- find any drawbacks - a test run is being different releases of documents, and between tions of the same release (such as XML made on the new Weather Data project documents related to different versions of the Schema and DTD versions) - it is important (see Special Content). standard. to maintain the relationships between the Main function of the Standards Commit- standards themselves and their associated tee is to oversee and direct the work being documentation. To do this a standards carried out by the individual Working Par- leased. New working practices have been naming convention has been adopted. ties so planning and co-ordination of the implemented to help make the best use of This convention uses a structured set of IPTC Standards Suite is essentially a high- the available Meeting time - including a de- names and version numbers for each docu- level example of this. cision to make an earlier start to the ses- ment - the Document Name Set which is Maintenance of existing standards also sions! defined to support storage in a structured remains important and during the year for- databases or a XML file. File names are mal approval has been given to NewsML Other standards created by assembling specific elements V1.2, NITF V3.2, and SportsML V1, along Although development attention is now along with delimiters, and a typical exam- with a series of additions to the IPTC Meta- strongly focused on the XML-based stan- ples for a standard definition is shown in data set (including the SRS) and release of dards, previously developed IPTC stan- the panel above. a Draft ProgramGuideML V1.0. In all cases dards are still widely used and have been specific attention has been paid to ensuring made available for free download from the Project Management that the document and examples are com- IPTC web site. First steps have been taken in the applica- plete before the standards are formally re- The IIM (Information Interchange Model)

IPTC Namespace

A proposal for a general IPTC Namespace has been submitted to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and, assuming it is approved, will initially be used to create namespaces for the individual standards. The proposed namespace has three branches: std; std-draft; and workdoc. For standards (std) - the structure is:

urn:iptc:std:{std-name}:{std-version}:{res-group}:{res-name}{:res-version}?

{std-name} is a unique identifier for the standard; {std-version} reflects the version of this standard - “current” is used for the current version of the standard; {res-group} ( “spec" for a resource specifying a standard; “doc” for all resources used for additional documentation of and to support the use of a standard; or “xmlns” for defining an XML namespace); {res-name} is an identifier for a resource; and {res-version} (? - means this element is optional) reflects the version of this resource.

Structure for the std-draft branch is essentially the same, while the workdoc branch is intended for IPTC resources not directly related to the standards but to the work of IPTC and will have a generally similar structure.

12 IPTC Spectrum 2003 STANDARDS was designed for multimedia applications toShop, where they are commonly known cies outside North America (where the simi- and is a container format with extensive as “IPTC Headers”. Current release of the lar ANPA 1312 is more common), The provision for editorial metadata. .Features IIM is V4.1 - released in 1997 - which can standard specifies a standard character set include the unique identification of news be downloaded - at no charge - from and header information and includes a list objects, linking mechanisms and audio http://www.iptc.org/IIM/. of the registered formats. Development data parameters. Earliest of the IPTC standards is IPTC was stopped following the release of revi- DataSets from the IIM Record 2 can be 7901, which is a text message format that sion 5 in 1995, but the standard is available added to images processed in Adobe Pho- has been widely adopted by News Agen- at http://www.iptc.org/IPTC7901/. News Summit 2003 Do standards really matter?

“Do standards for news really matter Michael Steidl reports from the governance - Prism (Publishing in the process of news aggregation” News Standards Summit held in Requirements for Industry Standard was a provocative question raised at Metadata) and ICE (Information and the first News Standards Summit on 8 Philadelphia, USA, during Content December in Philadelphia, PA (USA). December 2003 Exchange); along This suggestion was prompted by the with widely fact that there are almost a dozen adopted such standards for the news industry, while there are still specifications - RSS (an XML based some requirements to be met. format for syndicating news), Atom ( a The reasoning behind this question is that current software format for editing and syndicating makes it possible to easily adapt almost every incoming news weblogs), and XMP (the eXtensible stream to the internal data repository of Metadata Platform from Adobe). a news aggregator said Chet Ensign In the “user requirements” session from LexisNexis in his keynote representatives from leading news presentation. However, he admitted providers (including IPTC members AP, Chet Ensign, Director of Architecture & there is a lot of other, and good, reasons Reuters, Dow Jones and NSK) talked Development to have standards in the news industry about their expectations of a “good Services, LexisNexis primarily to reduce costs and to add standard” while speakers from NISO gave the keynote value to news exchange. (Historical Newspaper Project) and presentation at the About 100 people from the news Vodafone (Mobile Communication) News Summit. industry, system vendors and XML explained why new or extended Misha Wolf, developers convened in the snowstorm standards are required to meet their Standards Manager, shaken city to see an overview of the needs. Content Architecture leading standards for news, to hear The final discussion showed some very divergent Group, Reuters about user requirements from various approaches to the news business. These ranged from the chaired the fields of news publishing and to discuss views expressed by persons who are running blogs (weB Logs Standards improvements for standards. This event - journals made available on the web) to those of people who Presentations and was proposed by a IPTC team headed run companies that make their living from selling news. There the final discussion. by Misha Wolf (Reuters), IDEAlliance was some implicit mutual agreement on the fact that a “super and OASIS joined the project and co- standard” covering all requirements from news creation to hosted it, while both Ifra and NAA news archiving would be desirable but currently remains as supported the effort. wishful thinking. The Summit started with presentations on a number of the But as the reviews - provided by the users - of currently standards available for news exchange, including: the IPTC existing standards showed, a lot of improvements could be offerings - NewsML, NITF, SportsML and other Payload made by all of the news standards bodies to increase the Markup Languages for News; standards under IDEAlliance satisfaction of their adopters.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 13 NEWSML SUPPORT NewsML Support Improving Working Party the Appeal Evolution of NewsML as the standard packaging and syndication mechanism for Although NewsML has been well received by the core IPTC multimedia news, and the membership the Working Party are now investigating ways to make promotion of its adoption the standard attractive to a wider user base. throughout the general news and publishing industry. ince its release in October 2000, that have been found necessary can be SNewsML has had two incremental up- seen as confirmation of the concepts be- dates, with the latest V1.2 being approved hind NewsML and a tribute to the effort that in October 2003. Changes made for both went into getting the launch version right. Web site: these updates were relatively minor and Despite this, it appears that adoption has www.newsml.org were made in response to specific requests remained relatively limited and one of the from users. main reasons for this appears to be a per- For example, for the latest version an ception that the standard is both complex Discussion group: alteration was made to allow repeated en- and difficult to implement - particularly in http://groups.yahoo.com/ tries for “Creator” in the Administrative Me- such areas as the Controlled Vocabularies tadata as a user had found that the limit of and TopicSets. group/newsml only one “Creator” (which may have been unintentional) was causing problems. Pioneering Similarly a change was made to the In some ways this can be attributed to the Functional Specification so that the lan- comprehensive scope of the project - as guage element (used to indicate the lan- can be seen from the original requirements Laurent Le Meur guage being used in a content item) is in the panel below. (AFP) directly referred to RFC 3066, which de- A second factor is that NewsML was in Working Party scribes the evolving set of language tags ways a pioneering XML application - XML Chairman used by the Internet community. Doing this itself and associated concepts have under- means that full use can be made of the lan- gone considerable development over the gauge tags without having to specify them past few years and it is reasonable to as- in an IPTC TopicSet. Since the changes sume that anyone developing a standard that have been made (for both V1.1 and such as NewsML would now be able to V1.2) are additions the new releases re- make much more use of established Stuart Myles main backwards compatible with the origi- techniques. As an example, the TopicSet Dow Jones & Co nal version.. mechanism had to be developed as part of Working Party The relatively small number of changes the package because there was no alterna- Vice-Chair Original NewsML Requirements

• Support the representation of electronic news entities such as news- items, parts of news-items, collections of news-items, relationships between news-items and metadata associated with newsitems. • Be usable throughout the news lifecycle. • Allow news-items to consist of arbitrary mixtures of media types, languages and encodings. • Be usable either as a replacement for or allow the transport of all existing news formats and encodings. • Support a number of different physical constructions of the same data, • Support the management and development of news-items over time. • Be simply extensible and flexible. • Allow for authentication and signature of metadata and newsitem content. • Not be unduly verbose. • Use XML and other appropriate standards and recommendations.

14 IPTC Spectrum 2003 NEWSML SUPPORT tive way of meeting the functional require- viders; Newspapers; Web Sites; Aggregra- DTD). Changes are likely to include a re- ments. Concepts such as RDF and tors; and News System Integrators. This vised controlled vocabulary mechanism TopicMaps were around when NewsML information will be presented as part of the (which will be used as a plug-in for all of the was being developed - and influenced the general IPTC standards information pack- new IPTC standards family). design - but the mechanisms for imple- age. menting them were themselves under de- velopment. Core program Outline contents for Overall this means that adoption has The planned NewsML V2 is seen as the NewsML V2 tended to be limited to organisations were core program in the new IPTC standards documentation there are technical staff who have the abil- family and considerable efforts are being ity, and time, to learn the complexities of the made to refine the requirements for this. In- • Introduction and standard, and who also have the influence depth brainstorming sessions were held in overview to promote its adoption by the organisation. conjunction with the Autumn Meeting; opin- More tools and systems are gradually be- ions sought via the email discussion • Tutorial coming available and this should help groups; specific questions raised as part of • The NewsML adoption, but more direct actions by IPTC the IPTC Standards Survey (see page 11); conceptual model also seem appropriate. the role of NewsML raised during the News • NewsML dynamic Standards Summit (page 13); and wide- Documentation ranging discussions held between inter- documentation A major initiative is under way to improve ested individuals and members of the • Guidelines the documentation and the main areas be- NewsML Working Party. • Examples, common ing covered are shown in the panel. It is implementations hoped that providing a clear and compre- Changes hensive documentation package will make Results of these discussions have still to be • The expert zone the standard easier to understand and im- fully collated and analysed, with planned • Functional specs plement. Some areas are seen as needing actions including: assessment of known • Reference material & particularly detailed explanation - such as NewsML applications; review of the downloads full application and extension of the Top- NewsML requirements and updating if nec- icSet mechanism - and these will be dealt essary; comparing the revised require- • Latest developments with by papers in “ The expert zone”. ments to the current NewsML release • Forum The business cases for adoption of (V1.2); updating the specifications and ex- • Contributors NewsML will also be re-stated with specific pressing the underlying conceptual model; explanations of the benefits for News Pro- outlining the NewsML V2 XML Schema (or Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå

The Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT) is the largest News Agency in the Nordic countries and was founded more than eighty years ago. The organisation is jointly owned by a group of the largest newspaper and media companies in Sweden, and annual turnover is now around twenty million Euro. There are offices at six locations within Sweden, along with a network of correspondents and stringers to give world-wide coverage. Overall there are more than 150 journalists who produce ready made pages, supplements and features as well as text, audio and video reports, along with web material. Customers for this output - most of which is in Swedish - are mainly in the media business and include newspapers, television and radio producers and telecommunications providers, though major companies and other large organisations are also users of TT’s services. See www.tt.se

IPTC Spectrum 2003 15 NEWS METADATA News What The Metadata Working News Is About Party Development and application of metadata as controlled vocabularies for use with Providing an extensive set of metadata terms, with explanations, NewsML and other IPTC helps to ensure that news items from different sources can be standards. Includes support identified, searched and processed in a uniform manner. for the IPTC Subject Reference System. aintenance of the IPTC Subject Refer- There are three levels of Subject Code: Mence System (SRS) remains a major Subject; Subject Matter; and Subject De- task, with an increasing number of mem- tail; and the procedure for making additions Web site: bers now starting to use the full system. In depends on the level. The seventeen Sub- www.iptc.org/metadata addition it appears that the Subject Code jects were selected to cover the main news part of the SRS is gaining acceptance as a areas, giving a reasonable level of discrimi- general purpose taxonomy - for defining nation while remaining straight forwards to content - beyond the news industry it was apply. It is not considered likely that any originally designed for. A comprehensive new areas will be appropriate at this level. review had been carried out during 2002 to ensure all SRS entries conformed to a com- Additions mon style, with guidelines being produced Additions at the second - Subject Matter - John Minting for the presentation of new entries. The level have to be considered with care to en- (UPI) process of refining and improving the sys- sure they fully meet the requirements for Working Party tem has since been continued. For exam- new entries (see panel), do not overlap with Chairman ple, all new proposals for Subject Code existing entries, and are likely to cover a entries have to include explanations - in reasonably broad interest area. Suggested English - of the terms. However, this was additions at this level are initially consid- not the case when the SRS was initially de- ered by an ad-hoc Working Party and as- Honor Craig-Bennet veloped, and the system contained a sig- suming that agreement is reached the (PA) nificant number of terms without changes will be recommended to the full Working Party explanations. Working Party for acceptance and subse- Vice-Chair quent approval by the Standards Commit- Descriptions tee. A concentrated effort has been made to ad- There is a “Fast Track” approvals pro- dress this problem so that all terms now cess for third-level - Subject Detail - entries. have proper descriptions. In addition a sig- Under this process change requests are nificant series of a additions have also been submitted to the Managing Director by e- made over the past year. To a large extent mail, and circulated to IPTC members, who this was due to users realising that they have a period of 21 days to make com- needed further headings to give full cover- ments or raise constructive objections. The age in specific subject areas. requests are then considered by a Jury (ap-

Criteria For Inclusion of New SRS Entries

• An IPTC member must need to use the proposed term(s) and gain support from other members during the consideration process. (Terms requested by non-IPTC members must be sponsored by an IPTC member). • The term should relate to general news, not to a specific discipline, and have a universal meaning. • The term is unique in its definition and not a synonym. • Each term should be accompanied by a precise explanation (in British English) within the intended context of its use. • Requests should be made using the form on the IPTC web site - www.iptc.org/metadata.

16 IPTC Spectrum 2003 NEWS METADATA pointed by the Standards Committee, and consisting of three to five members with a good knowledge of Subject Codes). If the proposals conform to the criteria for inclu- sion; are seen to belong under the pro- posed Subject Matter heading; and there have been no objections; they will be ap- proved and taken into the SRS. Where problems are encountered the Jury will try to resolve them with the proposer, or ask for them to be resubmitted with modifications. Qualifiers The fast track process can also be used for subject qualifiers. These are additional codes that are used to provide further de- tabase has a set of content maintenance The IPTC Web site includes a specific section tails about a subject. At the moment subject functions including a publically available dealing with Metadata - qualifiers are only used for entries under www.iptc.org/metadata.In addition to letting list of terms added for, and since release of, users view the SRS and NewsML TopicSets Sports, with typical examples including in- a given version. they can be freely downloaded. formation on the gender of the contestant, The reference version and available or that a specific race was a qualifying translations are available on the IPTC web this “Scene” TopicSet can be used to pro- round. site, where there is also a Subject Code vide descriptions of the content of images, An area that has received a lot of atten- viewer which lets the user view both the but it has been designed to allow extension tion is the handling of potentially duplicate original and translated codes. to cover other media types - see box below. entries. Ideally a given subject area will Although most of the translations have Efforts were also made to develop a gen- only appear once as a Subject Code, with been produced by IPTC members to meet eral “Geographic Regions” TopicSet but multiple code references being used to give their own requirements, the wide appeal of different usages amongst members meant precise content identification. In practice the Subject Codes (as a news taxonomy) that it would only have limited application this approach has been found over restric- has resulted in translations being produced and so was not proceeded with. The work tive and following considerable debate is by non-members and offered to IPTC. In needed to develop and maintain general has been accepted that there are some line with the practice for other proposals TopicSets can only be justified when they special cases where apparently duplicate made by non-member, such translations are likely to be widely adopted - users who entries can be allowed (as sub-entries un- can only be considered if they are spon- have specific needs can produce their own der different parents). sored by a member. TopicSets as necessary. Factors that would have to be taken into Translations account include confirmation of the accu- IIM Legacy One of the features of the Subject Codes racy of the translation and the arrange- Some confusion seems to have been cre- (and Subject Qualifiers) is that they have ments for updating the translation. To date ated by the way certain TopicSets - the been designed to be language independ- only translations produced by members Subject Codes, Subject Qualifiers, Medi- ent, with the actual subject codes being nu- have been adopted for release. aType, NewsItemType, and Genre are meric. In the reference version these codes treated as part of the Subject Reference have English language names and NewsML TopicSets System, while others are separate. This is explanation, but these can be translated Maintenance and development of Top- because the SRS was originally developed into other languages for ease of use. The icSets for use in NewsML is an equally im- for use with the IIM (Information Inter- English reference version is held in a data- portant task. A unified structure has been change Model), and since the IIM is still in base and can be accessed through the adopted so that information can be re- general use, the SRS has to be maintained IPTC web site. A number of translations of trieved from all TopicSets using the same in such a way as to ensure it remains con- the Subject Codes - provided by members mechanism. sistent with the IIM requirements. Other - are also available in this database, along Detailed additions were made to several of TopicSets were produced specifically for with other parts of the SRS. the established TopicSets and a com- NewsML and have no relevance for the IIM, It is important to ensure that the trans- pletely new one produced. At the moment so they are separate from the SRS. lated versions remain in step with changes to the reference version, which is updated on a regular basis. To help with this the da- Scene TopicSet Part of the new “Scene” TopicSet which has been developed to provide descriptions of 010100 headshot A head only view of a person (or animal/s) or persons photographs, with provision for future as in a montage. extension to cover other media. 010200 half-length A torso and head view of a person or persons. A numbering system - similar to that used for 010300 full-length A view from head to toe of a person or persons Subject Codes - has been adopted to allow 010400 profile A view of a person from the side easy identification if the terms are translated. 010500 rear view A view of a person or persons from the rear. The first two digits of the number identify the media (only 01 has been used so far, for 010600 single A view of only one person, object or animal. pictures), while additional digits have been 010700 couple A view of two people who are in a personal included in case it is decided to add more relationship, for example engaged, married or in a detailed classifications. romantic partnership.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 17 NEWS INDUSTRY TEXT FORMAT News Incremental Industry Text Format Improvements Working Party Undertakes maintenance and The XML version of the NITF was released in 1999 and has been development of the News widely adopted by the world‘s news industries. A continuing Industry Text Format (NITF) development programme ensures that it continues to meet user’s and promotes the wider use needs with Version 3.2 being released in October 2003. of the standard. n its present form the NITF is an XML trieval, making it easier to re-purpose mate- Ibased standard that can be used to define rial. Web site: the structure and content of news. An ex- In many ways the NITF can be consid- tensive metadata vocabulary makes it ered to be a mature standard, but a continu- www.nitf.org possible to provide information about the ing development programme ensures that document itself and about the content of it continues to meet user’s changing needs, the document. For example the description with the latest Version 3.2 being released in Discussion group: of the document might include such as the October 2003. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ publication date, urgency copyright details Changes introduced for this version are nitf/ and news management data. typical and included: provision for multiple headlines - to allow for cases where the Metadata content might be output in alternative forms So far as the content is concerned specific for different media; a series of detail adjust- Alan Karben provision is made for the IPTC Subject Ref- ments designed to improve consistency; (XML Team erence System (SRS) codes, allowing and a method of handling “Ruby” (see box Solutions) identification of the type of the article (such on opposite page for details). These modifi- Working Party as “Feature “ or “Interview”) along with a de- cations were fully backwards compatible, Chairman tailed description of the content. as they were additions rather than Headlines and bylines appear before the changes, main body of the copy, which may be split The original version of the NITF used into paragraphs with appropriate subhead- SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Lan- ings. The main content can also contain ta- guage) and some areas were heavily influ- bles, lists and embedded images. enced by existing HTML (Hypertext Markup A set of “enriched-text” elements makes it Language) structures. Many of these struc- possible to identify specific parts of the con- tures are no longer seen as being appropri- tent, such as people. Places and organisa- ate, and there has been a sustained effort tions as well as allowing words to be Transfer of NITF metadata to NewsML can be emphasised and hyperlinks created. These carried out with the help of the mapping elements allow improved indexing and re- spreadsheet available on the NITF website.

18 IPTC Spectrum 2003 NEWS INDUSTRY TEXT FORMAT to replace or deprecate them as part of the dition is section listing organisations using tablished NewsML namespace proved to continuing development programme. the NITF with brief company details as well have serious drawbacks and so was not as details of their applications. proceeded with. The proposed URN Open process namespace for IPTC (see the Standards Development of the NITF is carried out in a NewsML Compatibility Committee section for more information) very open manner. Proposals for changes Although it is a separate standard the NITF will now be used instead. to be considered at the next Working Party is recommended for use as the text format session are posted on the NITF Web site in NewsML and particular attention is being (generally well in advance of the Meeting) paid to compatibility of the metadata in the with a request for comments, with members two standards. One way of using the stan- RUBY of the NITF discussion group also being in- dards together recommends that the NITF formed. The proposals are then discussed metadata should be migrated into the Ruby characters are used in by the Working Party and may be ap- NewsML instance that contains the NITF Japanese (and sometimes in proved, modified or turned down. When ap- package. To help with this a spreadsheet Chinese) as an annotation to a base propriate changes that have been has been produced to provide a common text (of Kanji characters in Japanese) approved are brought together to give a way of transferring the information, while and provide a guide to pronunciation new release of the standard. A list of there is also an XSLT stylesheet to carry or meaning. changes between release versions is also out the transfer. Generally the “ruby” text is presented maintained. in a smaller text size alongside the The NITF Web site has been developed Namespace text it refers to. Different styles of as a major resource with the standard (and Establishing an URN namespace for the ruby may be applied to a single associated documentation) being available NITF has received a lot of attention over the (Kanji) character or to a word formed for free download, along with dynamic year with requests from potential users. An from several characters. documentation and a tutorial. A recent ad- initial proposal to adapt the previously es- CCI Europe

CCI Europe are a leading provider of publishing systems - Parent company of CCI Europe is Stibo, which was originally to deal with editorial, advertising and archiving established as an Aarhus printing house in 1794 and now has requirements - which are in use in newspaper offices divisions: CCI Europe; Stibo Graphic, who offer publishing throughout the world. solutions for electronic and printed media; and Stibo Catalog, Products include: providers of catalogue content management solutions. Stibo is CCI NewsGate - a system intended for optimising content now a foundation under a Danish Royal charter creation and management processes throughout the entire More information is available on www.ccieurope.com. news publishing life cycle and value chain. CCI NewsDesk Custom Line - an editorial system that can be extensively customised to suit individual newspaper needs. CCI NewsDesk BaseLine a standardised editorial solution based on Custom Line software CCI AdDesk Production - for handling The state-of-the art headquarters building for the advertising production process. CCI Europe (right) was opened in 2002.While CCI AdDesk Sales - an advertising these headquarters are in Aarhus, Denmark, booking, selling and administration CCI Europe also has offices in the USA, system. Germany and France.

IPTC Spectrum 2003 19 SPECIAL CONTENT Special Dedicated News Content Working Structures Party Development and support for Special purpose systems for handling well defined types of news standards dealing with structured content - can give more efficient processing, presentation and retrieval. including SportsML, ProgramGuideML, and here are a number of clearly-identified really interested in open standards. EventsML. Tareas that generate a significant volume However, the importance of weather in- of news, which has to be processed and de- formation to the news industry is recog- livered in a uniform manner. Ideally the nised - particular interest has been shown Web sites and discussion news content will be in a form that will allow by local newspapers in the US who want to groups: easy (automated if possible) processing for make their web sites more attractive to us- See individual standards presentation in a number of formats. ers. Local weather information is seen as Several such areas have been identified particularly useful for this as it has consid- and special purpose systems proposed to erable appeal. Because of this it was de- deal with them. These systems are de- cided to move ahead with the development signed so that they can be used with of a system. NewsML, though in most cases they will Although requirements for the sytem are Geoffrey Haynes also be suitable for stand-alone applica- still being established, consideration is be- (AP) tions. As with other IPTC work, there has to ing given to including broadly related data Working Party be enough demand from members to en- with the main weather content. This could Chairman sure that they will make the necessary de- include information on pollen counts, pollu- velopment resources available. tion measurements, tide details, and even limited astronomical information. Projects Henrik Stadler Events (TT) At the moment four main projects are at Working Party varying stages: As the name suggests, EventsML is in- Vice-Chair Sports ML V1 has been released and is in tended to deal with Events, and in news use, with further work under way to extend terms an Event is described as something coverage to additional sports - see opposite with a short life that will take place at a spe- page. cific date and time. Typical applications - ProgramGuideML has been made avail- again in the news context - would be as an able as a V1.0 draft, with the intention of editorial assignment tool, for daybooks, EventsML moving to formal adoption and release and for publishable event information. Con- early in 2004 - see page 22 tent would encompass, for example, sport- EventsML is still in the planning stage, and ing events, financial earnings calendars Discussion group: the most recent development is a system to planned news events, and forthcoming http://groupd.yahoo.com/ handle Weather Data. elections. A basic requirement is that eventml-dev EventsML should to be a XML standard Weather Data that can be incorporated in the other IPTC Ways of dealing with weather information Standards or used as a stand-alone appli- Dominic Chan have been looked at in some depth with cation. (Canada Newswire) presentations from several members on Investigations showed that there are a EventsML Lead the approaches they have already adopted, number of packages already in widespread along with investigations of existing sys- use for handling events, notable the closely tems and services. related iCalendar and vCalendar. Analysis The information obtained seemed to of members requirement showed that Johan Lindgren show that while the weather organisations these existing formats could handle much (TT) has their own - well formatted - systems for of the information members wanted to deal EventsML Lead interchanging weather data, these systems with, but they had a significant disadvan- were not really suitable for use with news tage in that neither of them was XML- applications. At the same time there were based. considerable variations in the ways that Because of this it was decided to ap- weather information was made available proach OASIS and see if it would be possi- for publication. It was also apparent that ble to form a discussion group to look at various commercial enterprises in this area event listing systems. This would make it have their own systems so they are not possible to establish the level of interest

20 IPTC Spectrum 2003 SPECIAL CONTENT

performance?; have any records been SportsML broken?; and so on. The standard descriptions (metadata) The global XML standard for the interchange of sports data. is held in Resource Files - these are maintained in TopicSets (as for Web site: www.sportsml.com NewsML). Information held also includes lists of teams in individual leagues of Discussion groups: specific sports - such as Major League http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml Baseball (USA) with team listings consisting of: Team ID, Team Location, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-arf Name, Team Nickname, Division ID, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-horse Division Name, Conference ID, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml-olympics Conference Name, League ID, League Name, Source (of the information), and Country. The current set of resource files are Alan Karben Johan Lindgren maintained by IPTC and available on the (XML Team) (TT) SportsML web site. As the system grows SportsML SportsML the intention is to appoint Resource File Vice-Lead Lead Delegates, who will keep the individual League (or Association) listings up to date. SportsML was formally launched in standard types of baseball pitch (in the As with NewsML the structure of Spring 2003, by which time some SportsML context) are: curveball, SportsML makes it straightforward for applications were already in use, fastball, slider, and knuckleball, while the users to develop their own resource files providing confirmation of the need for ways a player can get out are: strikeout, to meet specific requirements. However, this standard. fielders-choice, throw-out, fly-ball, using the IPTC supported resource files These early applications were based pickoff, and caught-stealing. For another has the advantage of maintaining on the V1.0 beta version which had been sport - golf - shot types are: drive, putt compatibility between different released in Autumn 2002 and only and pitch, while after the shot has been information providers. For example a needed slight revision to give the final taken the ball can land on: fairway, sand, soccer report might want to combine version. Interest in the standard has water rough, green, or in the hole. information from European, Japanese remained high since the release and it is Scores can be recorded for teams or and South American sources. reported that two of the four major sports individuals, along with a syndicators in the USA now offer range of additional SportsML output - and a third has information, such as when expressed interest. they happened, who made The system has a modular design with them, and who helped a core DTD to deal with information that make them. Provision is is common to a wide range of sports, also made for the inclusion and plug-in DTDs to handle more of news stories (with the detailed information that is specific to a NITF being the single sport. Sports currently covered recommended format). with plug-ins are American Football; Baseball; Basketball; Golf; Ice Hockey, Reports Soccer; and Tennis, while work is under By putting the individual Above: Sample results output (in Swedish) for a Olympic way to provide detailed coverage for pieces of information weightlifting event, showing medal positions. Australian Rules Football. Olympic together in different ways it Below: example of the USA National Basketball Association Events, and Horse and Harness Racing. is possible to provide a Standings. wide variety of Standard descriptions reports dealing with Individual items of sports information are different aspects of identified using standard descriptions. the sport: who won For example information for a player and what was the might include their status, with the score? - or who is following standard options; scholastic, winning and what is college, amateur, professional, semi- the latest score if the professional, and former-professional. game is still in Similarly the participation of a player in a progress?; what are game might be classified as: starter the game schedules (takes part at the beginning of the for the team, and game); bench (joins the game as a where will they be substitute); and scratched (is not played?; which available to take part). players have the Actions are covered in a similar way - best (statistical)

IPTC Spectrum 2003 21 SPECIAL CONTENT

(sports) where team and player details ProgrammeGuideML can be included. Rights information - both copyright and usage rights - is also ProgramGuideML aims to be the global XML standard for the catered for. interchange of Radio/TV Program Information, based on NewsML. Content Detailed information is available on the Web site: www.programguideml.org content of individual programmes. The title has a supplementary element for Discussion group: pronunciation (which may be used for http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProgramGuideML automatic voice applications) and a subtitle. Content may be included in the NewsML document, or externally Manabu Miyake, referenced and provision is made for (Yomiuri Shimbun) ProgramGuideML modifications. Repeated credits cater for Lead casts and other participants, and multiple sub-programme can be included, each of which can contain a fresh set of programme information. Development of the television and used in the commentaries; Presentation of programme radio programme listings system - and Program-NewsML - provides information in table (Schedule) format is ProgramGuideML - has been programme information in a format specifically catered for with details for undertaken by a team made up from suitable for web content and similar the station concerned and the period members of the Japan Newspaper applications. covered as well as the individual Publishers & Editors Association ProgramGuideML makes provision for programmes. Provision has also been (Nihon Shinbun Kyokai - NSK) with extensive administrative information, made for details of substitute input and assistance from other IPTC which includes details of the programmes - such as items held in members. Version 1.0 draft of the broadcasting station; programme start reserve to replace a sporting fixture that standard was released in October and finish dates and times; programme might be cancelled because of adverse 2003, with formal release planned for length, broadcast mode (including weather conditions. Summer 2004. standard, high definition, and multiview); There is an European Broadcasting ProgramGuideML is based on pay-per-view charges (as applicable); a Union (EBU) project TV-Anytime NewsML and designed for the method of indicating possible (www.tv-anytime.org) which is interchange of radio and television programme changes; and information on developing open specifications to programme information between news when the programme was previously simplify the use of consumer devices and broadcasting organisations. As with shown, or will be shown again. such as personal video recording NewsML it is designed to handle all Descriptive information covers the systems. TV-Anytime is XML-based with types of media, including text, video, genre of the programme along with much of the information used being the audio graphics and photographs and information on the first date of same as for ProgramGuideML, and combinations of media, in any required broadcast, the episode number and a steps are being taken to ensure that the language. Although primarily intended descriptive keyword (for example two systems will work together. for the interchange of programme “Adventure” or “Romance”) for information, ProgramGuideML is also user searches. Special suitable for the storage of such provision is made for games information. Programme information for the complete range of broadcast services - Shown right is a sample programme table - for a the NHK such as terrestrial, cable and satellite - World TV service - produced using can be represented and presented in the the ProgrammeGuideML program form of programme listings. These may shown below.The station name be in different formats to suit printed can be seen in the fifth line, while (newspaper) listings, website listings and the length of the first programme is the information published by the shown as 58 minutes. broadcasting stations. Elements Main elements are as follows: ProgramTable-NewsML - provides programme table information for each station being covered; ProgramCommentary-NewsML - for descriptive commentaries on individual programmes; ProgramPicture-NewsML - for pictures

22 IPTC Spectrum 2003 SPECIAL CONTENT and start a more general, co-operative, de- news. Investigations have included a series velopment programme. of detailed presentations from individual Fantasy Sports There are clear advantages in being able members outlining how they handle their to draw on the expertise of a much larger in- national, and local, elections. terest base - both in terms of spreading the It is clear that this is a major area of inter- The way in which systems development effort and in terms of achiev- est, but after careful consideration it was developed for specific news ing the widest possible coverage and ac- decided that the wide variety of voting sys- applications can find other uses is ceptability. tems, along with varying requirements for illustrated by the potential A possible drawback is that the develop- how the results are presented meant that application of SportsML to fantasy ment process might become drawn-out, there was little prospect of putting together sports. while there are also reservations about a general-purpose system. Now a major business area, basing applications on systems that are not However, individual members will con- fantasy sports make it possible for under direct IPTC control - for example tinue with their own projects in this area enthusiasts to use their knowledge changes made in the interest of the wider with a general watching brief being main- and compete against one another in user community could have an adverse ef- tained. This will include monitoring other team management. fect on news applications. initiatives in the area - including the work Exact details can vary but - as a being undertaken by an OASIS Technical typical example - for a given sport the Requirements Committee on an Election and Voter Serv- participants select a “team” made up At the same time work has started to build a ices System. of individual players selected from a model of user requirements that could form specific division of the sport. Points the basis of a XML Schema. If a co- Compatibility are awarded to each of these players operative venture goes ahead this model Other systems being produced by outside on the basis of their performances in will be available as a starting point. Alterna- bodies are also monitored to see if there the real games and the rating of each tively, if it is decided to produce an Events are any possibilities of co-operation - in par- “fantasy team” calculated according listing specific to the news industry, the ticular to ensure that the output from such to the performances of the players model will be the basis for the new stan- systems can be made available in a form making it up. dard. that is readily compatible with NewsML. Since the game depends on having These applications include XBRL (eXtensi- precise details of the individual Elections ble Business Research Language), which player’s performances there is a requirement for substantial amounts Other areas have also received considera- appears to have been well received by the of formatted data - something that tion. These include Election Results, which financial industry, and the Extensible Public SportsML is well able to provide. generates a considerable amounts of Relations Language (XPRL). Ritzau Bureau I's

Ritzaus Bureau was founded in 1866 by the Danish journal- correspondents in a number of international capital, and co- ist Erik Nikolai Ritzau and is now the biggest independent operates with European news agencies: Reuters in London, Danish news agency. It provides a round-the-clock news dpa in Hamburg, and afp in Paris. service to the Danish press as well as supplying informa- See www.ritzau.dk tion to several government ministries and financial institu- tions. The core product is written news, which is distributed online to all Danish media and to several media in the remaining part of Scandinavia. As well as the written news Ritzau supplies radio- and tv-stations with a ready-to-use news service and soundbites, while graphics are offered to media in Denmark and abroad. English language news is also provided. Ritzau state that accuracy, speed and credibility are the backbone of their corporate policy, and that surveys show that Ritzau is rated as one of the most trustworthy Danish news media. In addition to their domestic operations Ritzau employs special and permanent

IPTC Spectrum 2003 23 NEWS MANAGEMENT News Under Control Management

Working Making the most of the News Management features built into NewsML required a good understanding of the various update Party approaches that can be used. Techniques for the handling of individual NewsItems and y its nature, news is constantly chang- but is further identified as an update. In- collection of NewsItems and Bing so information providers need to be stead of the original content this update their links to other NewsItems able to update, delete, or change the news NewsItem contains the changes that are to throughout their entire life objects that have been sent to their custom- be made in one or more update elements, cycle, including the ers. NewsML has an extensive and versa- each of which which can contain a series of development of processing tile set of mechanisms for carrying out such Delete, Replace, InsertBefore and InsertAf- models for news. news management, and a formal guide to ter subelements. the process has now been released. This To update the subscriber’s archive the guide does not add anything to the stan- relevant NewsItem is found and the Update dard but pulls together and explains the subelements are processed in order, with various features. the parts (of the NewsItem) to be modified Web site: There are three ways in which news man- being identified using their Duid or Euid. www.newsml.org agement can be applied using NewsML, Again, the revised NewsItem will be given with operations being carried out on individ- a higher RevisionID. ual NewsItems, or on parts of NewsItems. Processing Model Discussion group: In NewsML a NewsItem is a managed set http://groups.yahoo.com/ of information and has a unique identifier With the Guide completed and released, at- (the NewsItemID which includes a Revi- tention of the News Management Working group/newsml sionID). In addition individual elements of a Party has turned to the development of a NewsML document can have a Duid (docu- Standard Processing Model that can be ment unique identifier) and/or a Euid (ele- used to define the way an application ment unique identifier). should process an NewsML instance. Be- Simplest form of news management is cause of the flexibility of the standard there the “No Archive” scenario in which the sub- can be several ways of carrying out an op- Stuart Myles scriber is supplied with a set of NewsItems. eration and detailed knowledge is needed (Dow Jones & Co) To make changes the provider simply sup- to establish the best approach. This is seen Working Party plies a replacement set of NewsItems, and Chairman as a source of confusion among imple- the original set is discarded by the sub- menters and can lead to incompatibility be- scriber. In this case there is no need to use tween systems. any of the available identifiers. Use of a Processing Model would simplify things by providing a way of interpreting the Replacement underlying semantics (facts about, and re- With the “Write Through” approach the sub- lationships between, the XML components) scriber maintains a news archive contain- of the XML application, and by using an ob- ing a set of published NewsItems. If ject model to interpret the data. With a sim- changes or updates are necessary the in- ple Processing Model each NewsML formation provider issues new NewsItems instance would be associated with a set of with all the changes having been made to semantics that would provide information the content. Replacement NewsItems have on how processing should be carried out. the same basic identifier as the items they A more elaborate model might involve replace, but with a higher RevisionID and splitting the NewsML instance into a set of the subscriber uses the identifier to find the individual objects - using the object model. previous version and replace it. Specific processes and behaviours can New NewsItems have the RevisionID set then be associated with each object. To do to 0 and the item is simply added to the ar- this there has to be an object model for chive. Deletion of a NewsItem is achieved NewsML and this work has been started. by issuing a “blank” replacement that only Since the Processing Model and the object contains identification and news manage- model are closely related, the two models ment information. will have to be developed together. The highest level of News Management It is recognised that this will be a signifi- involves operations on parts of NewsItems, cant commitment so initial efforts will be which can be replaced, deleted, or have ad- concentrated on a Processing Model for ditional material incorporated. The informa- News Management in V2 of the standard, tion provider supplies a NewsItem which with the intension of subsequently extend- has the same basic identifier (as before) ing coverage to other operations.

21 IPTC Spectrum 2003