IPTC Publishes Guidelines for its New G2-Standards

LONDON - 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 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 www.iptc.org

Source: IPTC

Media contact: Michael Steidl, IPTC Managing director, Phone: +44(20)3178-4922, Email: office at iptc.org