London (England) -- A new publication from the International Press Telecommunications Council will help news organizations cope with the growing flood of information in a challenging economic environment.

Targeted to newspapers, news agencies, news web sites and news system vendors, the "IPTC G2-Standards Guide for Implementers" describes IPTC G2 news exchange standards, how they work, and why they work.  An executive summary encapsulates the major points that news industry leaders need to help form an enterprise G2 strategy.

The Guide for Implementers package and a wealth of additional materials are available now at http://www.iptc.org/

"This is an exciting opportunity for newspapers to look at the IPTC G2 news exchange standards in an easy-to-understand way," said Walter Baranger of The New York Times. "With cost pressures increasing almost daily, IPTC G2 gives us strategic options for handling news that we could only imagine a few years ago."

The IPTC G2-family of standards are text and multimedia formats that are designed to make news exchange faster, cheaper and more accurate. The three IPTC G2-Standards (NewsML-G2, EventsML-G2 and SportsML-G2) form a unified XML structure to encapsulate different types of news; a rich suite of metadata is also available, and the guide explains mechanisms for its use within G2.

The new guide helps programmers and system engineers better understand and use the IPTC G2-family of news exchange standards, and will also help managers adopt IPTC-G2 into their own workflows.

"We at Thomson Reuters have found our internal implementation guides to be an essential reference during NewsML-G2 development. The public IPTC G2-Standards Guide for Implementers will greatly help common implementation across providers and also benefit consumers. This can only improve interoperability and adoption of the G2-Standards," said Dave Compton, senior media technologist at Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters was an active co-developer of the IPTC G2-Standards.

IPTC G2-Standards have been tested and launched at major news agencies worldwide, and their use is quickly expanding as news providers and recipients search for better automation and work tools in their production systems. The standards are especially useful for news web sites and newspapers, where competitive speed is at a premium.

The new guide comprises 170 pages plus a folder of practical examples. Programmers with limited journalism experience will appreciate the extensive background briefing that explains G2's role in typical news flow.

As with all IPTC products, the Guide for Implementers package is available without cost under the generous terms of the IPTC's Intellectual Property Policy.

About the IPTC

The IPTC, based in London, UK, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards for improved news exchange that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world.
Information on all IPTC standards such as the family of G2-Standards - NewsML-G2, EventsML-G2 and SportsML-G2 -, the Photo Metadata standards, NewsML 1, NITF, IIM and the NewsCodes together with a list of existing members and information on how to join is available at http://www.iptc.org

For more information contact Michael Steidl, office@iptc.org