MILAN, Italy (18 November 2005) -- Representatives of the world's major news agencies continued work on a series of standards for sharing news using a common set of easy-to-use tags and data sets.
Meeting in Milan, members of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC, http://www.iptc.org ) approved further development of NewsML 2, an XML-based markup language that will easily allow text, photos, graphics and other media to be managed, bundled and shared. Representatives of nearly 40 news agencies and news system vendors heard reports of steady progress toward preliminary approval in 2006.
Using a modular approach, news agencies will be able to select a set of NewsML 2 markup as simple or as complex as needed, allowing even small newspapers and web sites benefit from the use of rich XML-based news content.
" NewsML 2 will revolutionize the way news can be shared," said Walter Baranger of The New York Times. "Not only does NewsML 2 break new ground for companies that gather news, but it makes delivery and reselling easier because newspapers and web sites that receive news can instantly see related articles and graphics the way the original editors intended. I'm especially excited about the possibilities for inclusion of sound bites and original source documents, such as transcripts."
Members also heard a progress report on a new standard for managing event information, called EventsML. This specification is being designed to be compatible with the broader NewsML 2 architecture. The IPTC is currently defining the data that will describe how a news agency plans to cover an event, as well as information about the event itself such as date, time, location and contact information. This specification is scheduled to be released following the approval of the NewsML 2 architecture.
A few days before the Milan meeting, the IPTC publicly released SportsML 1.6, which features such enhancements as detailed coverage of auto racing results. At the meeting, the IPTC's SportsML committee presented a series of examples illustrating how publishers of SportsML may benefit from the forthcoming NewsML 2 framework. The examples included demonstrations of content packaging and cross-linking previously unavailable to publishers, including those using SportsML without such a framework.

The IPTC's next regular meeting will be in Vancouver, Canada, in March 2006.