IPTC MIRROR FEBRUARY 2010 Page 1

No 156 / Feb 10

SUMMARY1 Industryweighsvalueof

linkingarchivalnewsdatatotheSemanticWeb

4 ExtraordinaryGeneralMeetingcalledfor10MarchinParis;Standardsrecentlyupdated

5 EuropeanBroadcastingUnionimplementsNewsML-G2

A Yahoo! Answers respondent estimated in 2009 that by 2010 the size of the Internet would equal 12 piles of pages, each one twice as long as the distance between the Sun and Pluto.

Another estimated the indexed World Wide Web soon would contain at least 19.71 billion pages. However, while documents and Web sites are linked, the information in them is not.

Cannewsmediauselinkeddataforastrongerfuture?

Callit“thetamingoftheWeb”.CallitfuelfortheSemanticWeb.Callitthe“NextBigThing”.

Whatever you call it, do not callLinkedDataa“passing fad”.Recentevidenceprovesthat,whilestillinitsinfancy,LinkedData isbecoming in-tegral to theWeb’s future.ActivitiesonbothsidesoftheAtlanticconfirmthis.

Governments are linking dataIn the UK, the government haslaunched a new venture to increasepublic access to official data. It isknown by its URL: data.gov.uk. TheeffortisbeingledbynoneotherthanSir TimBerners-Lee, inventor of theWorldWideWeb,andProfessorNi-gelShadboltofSouthamptonUniver-sity.Manyarealreadylookingathowthevastamountsofpublicdatacanbeharnessedtoservecitizens.

OneapplicationmakesthelocationsofEngland’salmost11,000General

Linking information from scattered public sites may be desirable for many, but is it right for profit-oriented news media?

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GraphicbyMattBritt/Wikipedia;courtesyCreativeCommonsAttribution2.5Genericlicense.

Practitioners available from iPhonesand iPods.Other developers postu-latethatmultipletypesofinformationaboutlocalesmayhelppeopledecidewherethebestschoolsareorpointtothemostcrime-freeneighborhoods.

IntheUS,theLibraryofCongress—oftenconsideredthelargestlibraryintheworld—nowisimplementingtheLinkedDatamovement’sapproachofinterconnectingdataontheWebviadereferenceable URIs. In doing so,it is also establishing rules for othergovernment agencies to follow. Thismeansmakingdissimilarvocabulariesof different agencies communicatewitheachother.

LibraryofCongressvocabulariesthatwillbecomeopensourceincludetheLibraryofCongressSubjectHeadings(LCSH), a thesaurus ofGeographicMaterials,geographicareacodesandlanguagecodes.TheLibrary’sefforts

supporttheObama’sadministration’sgoal ofmakinggovernment informa-tion—alreadyinthepublicdomain—moretransparentandaccessible.

What are news media doing?Some media publicly support the

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Continued, “News Linked Data” page 3

News Linked Data, from page 1

This diagram, updated regularly, represents instance linkages within the Linking Open Data Community Project’s datasets. The diagram grows more complex as new datasets are added.

GraphicbyChrisBezier.LicensedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution-ShareAlike3.0License.

The Linked Data Principles

1.UseURIsasnamesforthings.

2.UseHTTPURIsso thatpeoplecanlookupthosenames.

3.WhensomeonelooksupaURI,provideusefulRDFinformation.

4.IncludeRDFstatementsthatlinktootherURIssothattheycandis-coverrelatedthings.

Tim Berners-Lee, 2006, on the underlying rules for structuring linked data for the Semantic Web.

Linked Data movement. The UK’sBritish Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) — the largest broadcastingnetworkintheworld—isbringingin-formation to itsWebsitesby linkingtooutsidedatabasesthathavemadetheir vocabularies open source. Es-sentially,BBCimportstheirdataandcombines it with its own to createricherprograms.

Itslaudedonlineprogram,BBCWild-lifeFinder,isanexampleofthetypeofenrichedinformationthatcanbecon-structedwhenone’sowneffortsarecombinedwith the efforts of others.The BBCWildlife Finder’s richnessresultsfromlinkingtodatasetsattheWorldWildlifeFederation,theUniver-sityofMichiganandDBpediathataremaintainedbythoseentities.Thelink-ingiscomplexandtechnicallysophis-ticated,but thecostsofmaintainingthematerial isdistributedacrosstheoriginatingorganisations.

There is a lot of discussion of “na-tivetotheWebvocabularies”,i.e.,tovocabulariesthatarepublished,con-form to Linked Data standards andare open-sourced. Somewould saytheyarebeinggivenaway.

In2009, theNewYorkTimes(NYT)

announced its intent to break with100 years of tradition and publishits thesaurus—more than onemil-liontermsinfivevocabulariesthatareused to tagNYTarticles—underaCreative Commons BY license thatlets others use it and contribute toit. As ofmid-January 2010, the first10,000subjectheadingsalreadyhadbeenpublished.TheNYTplans firsttoreleasetagsbackto1980andlat-erbackto1851.

Open Linked vs News Linked DataIt is one thing to open access vialinked data to information that waspaidforbytaxpayers.Newsmaybeanothermatter.

In January, TheGuardian, the BBC,andtheMediaStandardsTrustspon-soredaone-day“NewsLinkedDataSummit”inLondonandinvitedevery-one in the news industry interestedindiscussing thepotentialofLinkedData for news organisations to at-tend.

MartinMooreoftheMediaStandardsTrustnotedthatthemeetingwasnotsomuchaforumfordecision-making,asforexploration.

“Wedidtalkaboutabunchofpoten-tial Linked Data experiments”, saidMoore,“thatwouldenablepeopleto

stickatoeinthewaterandgetabet-tersenseofhowmuchworkLinkedDatainvolvesandwhatitsvaluemightbe.Mostpeopletherewantedtogetinvolvedinsomeway”,headded.Thedifferences lay inhowmuchor howlittle involvement participants werepreparedtogive.

What topics were discussed? Ac-cordingtoMoore,“Basicsweredis-cussed,like‘WhatdoesLinkedDatamean?’ and ‘Howmight it have val-ue?’Therewere technicalquestionsabout how you link together. If youlinktoonedataset,thenyou’relinkedtomassesofthem.Wherewouldthejunctionpointsbe,thecanonicaldatapoints?Therewillbemassesofsuchpoints.Thereneedstobeagreementabouthowwewillfindthem”.

Asanexample,hesaid,“Let’ssayyouhaveanewseventliketheHaitiearth-quake.Onceit’sdefinedsomewhere,likeinWikipedia,thenthatbecomesajunctionpointaboutthatevent.”

Thereareotherissuesthanthestrictlytechnicalorstructural,however.“Foranevent like theWorldCup, forex-ample”,Mooresaid,“manyorganisa-tions already hold rights to differentaspectsof theevent,sodata linkingto that information could run into li-

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Continued, “News Linked Data” page 4

News Linked Data, from page 2

LINKED DATA GLOSSARY

DBpedia—aprojectattwoGermanuniversitiestopullstructuredinforma-tion from informationcreatedaspartof theWikipediaproject andmake itavailableusingstandardisedformats.Dereferenceable URI —amechanismdefininghowtouseaURIforretriev-ingacopyor representationof the resource it identifies.Different Internetprotocolsmaybeused;themostwidelyusedisHTTP.FOAF—acronymfor“friendofafriend”;amachine-readableontologyde-scribingpersons, their activitiesand their relation tootherpeopleandob-jects.hNews— amicroformat for addingmetadata to news content in aWebdocument;includesfieldsthatdescribejournalisticprinciplesupheldbythejournalist.LCSH—LibraryofCongressSubjectHeadings (US);governmentprojecttodefinetagstobeusedwithpublicinformation;theyaremadeavailablebystandardisedformatscompatiblewiththeSemanticWeb.Linked Data—amethodofidentifyingandestablishingformalrelationshipsbetweendatawhichexistin(Web)documentsusingdereferenceableURIs;aW3CprojectthatisasubsetoftheSemanticWeb.News Linked Data—materialfromnewsmediaarchives,preparedaccord-ingtoLinkedDataprinciplesanddistributedontheWeb.Open Linked Data—informationthatispubliclyavailable,preparedaccord-ingtoLinkedDataprinciplesanddistributedontheWeb.OWL—WebOntologyLanguage;aRDF-basedtechnologywhichismeanttobeusedwhentheknowledgerepresentedbythecontentofa(Web)document,i.e.persons,locations,topics,datesetc.,needstobeformallynotated.RDF–ResourceDescriptionFramework; a standardmodel for the formalnotationofassertionsaboutresources;a.k.a.,aformalnotationofmetadata.RDFa—astandardthataddsasetofattributelevelextensionstoXHTMLforembeddingrichmetadatawithinWebdocumentsSemantic Web—theextensionoftheWorldWideWebthatenablesthelinkingofdatacontainedinWebpages.SEO—SearchEngineOptimization;theprocessofimprovingWebsiterank-inginsearchengineresults.SPARQL—aquerylanguageforRDFthatisconsideredakeytechnologyoftheSemanticWeb.URI—UniformResourceIdentifier:astringofcharactersusedtoidentifyaresource.URIsaresplitintotwogroups:URNsasabstractnamesandURLsaslocatorsofresources.

censing difficulties.” Resolving suchlegal issuesaddsanadditional layerofcomplexity tomakingLinkedDatawork, especially for news organisa-tions.

In other words, the legal, businessandconceptroadblocksthatmustbeovercomeregardingLinkedDataareconsiderableandmaybemorediffi-culttoresolvethantechnicalissues.

Putting it to the testAlthough it was not an objective, aconsensus grew out of themeetingthatthenationalelectionsintheUK,

whichwilltakeplaceinMayorJuneofthisyear,couldbeagoodtestofthevalue of news linked data and offertechnical implementation experienceaswell.

Whethernewsmedia in theUKendupusingthiseventasaLinkedDatafeasibility test isnotknownor isnotbeingshared.BoththeJanuaryNewsLinkedDataSummitandalateFeb-ruarymeeting thatwasmore techni-callyfocusedwereheldunder“Chel-tenham Rule”. This means everyoneagreednottotalkaboutwhoattend-edorwhovoicedwhichopinion.Theconfidentialityrulewouldensurethatissuescouldbediscussedandbrain-

stormedwithoutfearthatopinionsex-pressedwouldfindtheirwaytocom-petitorsorunsympatheticexecutives.Theobjectivewastosecurethefreeflowofideas.

Martin Belam, The Guardian’s in-formation architect, is a respectedbloggeronnewsandtechnology is-sues. He organized, spoke at andparticipated in several linked datameet-ups in thepast fivemonths. Inhisestimation,eventhoughUKelec-tioncoverageplansmightnotincludeexperimentswithnewslinkeddata,“Ithasbeenreallypositivesofartogetpeople fromacrossvaryingcompet-ingnewsorganisationsintothesameroomtotalkaboutsolvingsomecom-monproblemsthatweshare.I’mcau-tiouslyoptimisticthatwe’llseefurtherdevelopments in using Linked Datafornewsthisyear.”

The business caseAnsweringthequestion“CanLinkedDatawork?”isjustthebeginning.“Isthereabusinesscase for it?” is therest of the question. Some are tak-ingawait-and-seeapproach;othersare,inMoore’swords,“stickingatoeinthewater”withprojectsthatvaryinscope.

While in a different form, Thomson-Reuters embraces Linked Data viaitsOpenCalaisproduct.ThegoalofOpenCalais, as notedon thecom-pany’sWebsite, is “tomake all theworld’scontentmoreaccessible, in-teroperableandvaluable”.

DaveComptonwithReutersintheUKsaid,“TimBerners-Leehaspreviouslystated that ‘TheSemanticWeb isn’tjustaboutputtingdataon theWeb.Itisaboutmakinglinks,sothataper-sonormachinecanexplorethewebofdata.WithLinkedData,whenyouhave someof it, you can find other,related data’. Applying this thinking,news providers can significantly im-provethecontentdiscoveryprocessby focussing on providing qualifiedlinksbetween thedata theypublish.Thisinterconnecteddatawebcreates

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Publisher’s Statement

TheIPTC MirrorispublishedfivetimesperyearbytheInternationalPressTelecommunicationsCouncil(IPTC).TheIPTC,basedinLondon,U.K.,isaconsortiumoftheworld‘smajornewsagencies,newspublishersandnewsindustryvendors.Foundedin1965,theIPTCdevelopsandmaintainsthetechnicalstandardsfor improvednewsexchangethatareusedbyvirtuallyeverymajornewsorganization in theworld.Membership isopentoorganisationsandcompaniesconcernedwithnewscollection,distributionandpublishing,aswellastosystemvendorssupportingthenewsindustry.TheIPTCkeepstheindustryapprisedofissuesanddevelopmentsthroughtheIPTCMirrorandtheIPTCWebsite:www.iptc.org.

IPTC Managing Director: Michael W. Steidl (mdirector@iptc.org) • Editor: Sue Sherrard Fine (editor@iptc.org) • 20 Garrick Street, London WC2E 9BT, United Kingdom • Tel: +44 (20) 3178 4922 • Fax: +44 (20) 7664 7878.

Graphic representations of the Internet that appear on pages 1-2 and, as icons, elsewhere were created by Matt Britt and Chris Bezier, published at Wikimedia.org and are used under Creative Commons licenses.

The IPTC is registered in England as “Comité International des Télécommunications de Presse” at 10 Portland Business Centre, Datchet, Slough, Berks, SL3 9EG, Registration No. 1010968.

The IPTCreleasedupdatesofafew of its standards in Decem-ber:

• NewsML-G2,thestandardforexchangingmultimedianewsandpackages thereof, was updatedto developer version 2.4, whichprovidesonlyupdatedschemas.

•EventsML-G2,thestandardforexchanging event and coverageplanning data, was updated todeveloperversion1.3,whichpro-videsonlyupdatedschemas.

• NITF, the standard for articlemarkup,wasupdated toversion3.5

•SportsML-G2,thestandardforsportsdata,wasalreadyupdatedtoversion2.1inNovember.

ExtraordinaryGeneralMeetinginParis

An extraordinary General Meet-ingoftheIPTCwilltakeplace10March2010inParisattheMille-niumHotelParisOpera,12Bou-levardHaussman,Paris75009at1500hrs., local time.Amember-shipvoteonchangestotheIPTCArticlesofAssociationisrequiredbylaw.

Reminder:IPTCstandardsupdated

News Linked Data, from page 3

Resources & Readings

Linked Data: Connected Distrib-uted Data Across the Web

Media Standard Trust: Martin Moore

Martin Belam, blog/The Guardian: News Linked Data Summit

RDF: Resource Description Framework

Semantic Web Community

Thomson-Reuters: Open Calais

URI: Uniform Resource Identifier

U.S. Library of Congress: LCSH

a much richer content resource forboth internal editorial usage and fortheconsumer.Ifcontentiswelllinked,itwillbefoundmoreeasily.Thepowerofbeingabletodiscoverandjoindatasetsprovidesnewandexcitingpossi-bilitiesformonetisingderiveddata”.

A more restrained approachThe Associated Press, which wasrepresented at the News LinkedDataSummit, is still in an investiga-tivemode.According toAP’sStuartMyles, “AP is interested in LinkedData, particularly in learning how itcanbenefitnewsorganisations(both

as publishers and consumers ofLinkedData),andourmembersandclients.Wedon’thaveanyfirmplansinthisarea”,hesaid.“Wehavespo-kentoothernewsorganisationsinfor-mallyabout thepossibilities (bothattheSummitandelsewhere).

“[Thoseattending]theSummitdecid-edtofocusonaveryUK-centricinitialproject— the forthcoming UK gen-eralelection—sowehaveagreedtoobserve,butnottakeanactiveroleinthatinitialpilot,sincewecan’tofferasmuchspecificexpertiseinthatarea,”Mylessaid.“Wehopetotakeamoreactiveroleinfutureefforts.”

Does IPTC have a role to play?“ThetechnicalsideofLinkedDataisquitemature”,saidMyles.“Thereareseveral tools, both commercial andopen source, for creating, storing,publishingandconsuminglinkeddata.Thereisquitealotofworkabouthowto convert existing information intoLinkedData.”InMyles’opinion,IPTCmighthaveavaluable role toplay increatingcontrolledvocabularies.

“IPTCcouldpublishitscontrolledvo-cabulariesusinglinkeddatatechnol-ogies”,saidMyles.“Itcouldalsomapbetweenthedifferentvocabulariesofothers”.

Gettingnumerouscontrolledvocabu-laries to work together is an impor-tantaspectofLinkedDatawithintheSemanticWeb.IPTC’srolecouldbecentral to doing it right, saidMyles.IPTChasvastexperiencetooffer.

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EuropeanBroadcastingUnion:anearlyadopteroftheNewsML-G2standardBy Jean-Pierre Evain and Benoît Sergent,

European Broadcasting Union

The EBU (European BroadcastingUnion), founded in 1950, isthe world’s largest professionalassociationofnationalbroadcasters.Itsmembersreachaweeklyaudienceof 650 million people in over 56countries.

In a nutshellTheorganizationprovidesservicestothebroadcastingcommunityatlarge,along with expertise — specific tomembers—on legal, technical andprogrammingissues.Italsoconductseconomic andmarket analyses andofferstargetedtrainingprogrammes.

One of the EBU’s main activitiesis exchanging content. The EBUcoordinates daily transfers ofprogrammes, music, sports eventsand news between members andothermediaoperators,andtransmitsthis content via the Eurovisionnetwork(forvideo)since1954,andEuroradio network (for audio) since1989.

EBU Headquarters are in Genevawith offices in Beijing, Brussels,London,Madrid,Moscow,NewYork,Singapore,andWashingtonDC.

News and sports exchangeMajor Eurovision activities includethecoordinationofnews,sportsand

entertainmenttransmissions.

EBU News Exchange is a platformbased in Geneva. The EBU NewsExchange’s deskmanagescontentprovided by Eurovision Membersand by agencies (APTN, CBS andReuters).Thiscontent, identifiedas“items”, can be news packages orliveevents.Today,morethan40,000news items are exchanged everyyear.

Contributors that wish to sharematerialcanexchangematerialovertheEurovisionsatellitenetworkoncethatmaterialhasbeenacceptedbyEurovision editorial staff, therebyallowingallrecipientstoreceivethematerialinrealtime.NewsProducershandle the daily exchange ofNewsandSportsitems.Theyalsoprovideinformation (metadata) about theitemsavailableforexchange.

The EBU has long been a leader in research and development for new media. Its commitment to identifying the best solutions for its members led to the decision to join IPTC and drove its participation in developing the NewsML-G2 specification.

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Technical innovation and standardisationEBUTECHNICALisattheforefrontofresearchanddevelopmentinnewmediaandhashelpeddevelopmanyradio and TV systems, includingRadio Data System (RDS), DigitalAudio Broadcasting (DAB), TV-Anytime (TVA), Digital VideoBroadcasting (DVB), and high-definitionTV(HDTV).

It is in this framework of identifyingand selecting best solutions for itsmembers that EBU TECHNICAL(the EBU Technical department)decided to join the IPTC andactively participate in defining theNewsML-G2standard.

Eurovision’s NewsML-G2 implementationAt the beginning, contribution anddistribution of material used to besimultaneousoversatellitelinks.

Thiswasfollowedafterseveralyearsby thedistributionofMPEGstreamfiles to remote recorder stationsnamedSuperPOP.Finally,file-basedcontributionhasbeenimplemented;thissoonwillbefollowedbyfullfileexchange (uplink and downlink).The NewsML-G2 standard playsa key role in this evolution of thedistribution network and newsroommanagementsystem.

EBU’s NewsML-G2 implementationwas deployed on 1 January 2009.Metadatafilesaredistributedinthisformat over EBU’s private satellitenetwork. NewsML-G2replaces theformer EBU format called “NMSXML”. As a distinctive additionalfeature, NewsML-G2 allows us toprovide references to keyframes,compressed video and videosources.

EBU News Exchange’s MAM orNewsroom Management System(NMS) is based on a relationaldatabase,which is the heart of thesystem. Newsroom users, suchas news editors, can access the

EBU’s Eurovision and Euroradio networks daily exchange news, sports and music programmes.

databaseandamendthedescriptionof an item, such as references tonews or sport content (shotlist),and its associated metadata (e.g.dopesheet),astheyobtainadditionalinformation about the event. Thesystem tracks changes, which arethen forwarded to all of EBU’sexternal platforms composed ofWebsites(XTRANET,theEurovisionWebsite—www.eurovision.net)andmembers’stationsnamedPOPandSuperPOP.Thisappliestometadata(NMSXMLinatransitoryperiodandNewsML- G2), keyframes, and lowresolution video or high resolutionvideo.

Mapping EBU NMS attributes toNewsML-G2provedtobeeasyaftera limited number of iterations. The

generationofNewsML-G2metadatadescriptionsismadefromthebatchprocessing and transformationof data from the NMS Database.Eurovision uses its own QCodes(e.g. for roles, station names). Asmentioned above, an essentialadvantageistheabilitytolinkdatatometadatadescriptionusingpartMeta,whichformerEBUNMSXMLdidnotallow.EBUTechnicalhasmadekeycontributionsforthedevelopmentofthispartofthespecification.

Collaborating with IPTC for thedevelopment of NewsML-G2proved to be a good choice. EBUencourages other news providerstomake the effort to learn anduseNewsML-G2.

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Benoît Sergent, Ph.D., is a Systems Architect for the European Broadcasting Union and works in IT Services.

Jean-Pierre Evain, is a Project Manager with the European Broadcasting Union and works in EBU Technical.