The World's Major News Players Adopt IPTC G2 for News Exchange
By Iptc, PRNEMonday, April 12, 2010
LONDON, April 13, 2010 - Five of the largest global news agencies have agreed to endorse and
support the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) G2 family
of news exchange standards. Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, dpa, the
Press Association and Thomson Reuters will support standards developed by the
IPTC that will provide news agencies, vendors and customers around the world
with a uniform method of exchanging multimedia news content.
Existing IPTC standards such as IPTC7901 and NITF have been implemented
by many organizations around the world for many years. The availability of
the new G2-Standards marks the first time the largest agencies have come
together to publicly endorse an IPTC standard. Support from these major
agencies means that the majority of the world's news content will be
available to all their customers in a standard format. The extensibility and
multimedia support built into the new G2-Standards will facilitate cost and
speed to market advantages that were difficult to achieve previously.
"Implementation and support of IPTC G2-Standards is a straight-forward
solution enabling an efficient and easy access to our Rich Media contents as
requested by the new media markets," said Jean-François Wets, Chief
Information Officer of AFP. "Involved in the development of IPTC NewsML-G2
and EventsML-G2 since the beginning, we are happy to offer our clients and
partners the benefits of technological changes transforming how news is
produced and managed through its life time".
"The latest generation of news standards developed by the IPTC will make
it easier and more efficient for AP members and customers to send and receive
news content, and integrate with our systems", said Vince Tripodi, Vice
President of Development for the AP.
"For more than 30 years news has been exchanged using the IPTC standard
called 7901. Now the time has come for the new IPTC G2-Standards to meet the
evolved business and technology requirements", said Helge Viehof, Chief
Information Officer of dpa and Chair of the IPTC Standards Committee. "Dpa's
new editorial system is based on this new standard. The times for many
different formats resulting in complex news exchange are over - dpa is able
to speak IPTC G2!"
"Central to Press Association's digital strategy is standardisation on a
single content format. IPTC's G2-Standards provide a powerful, interoperable
and extensible framework ideally suited to this purpose as it encapsulates
media industry business logic, and enables all assets (text, pictures,
videos, results) to be treated in the same way. For this reason, Press
Association's next generation news content systems are built around the IPTC
G2-Standards."
"Reuters' adoption of the G2-Standards has enabled us to provide an
interconnected data web of content resources for both our customers and
internal editorial users" said Dave Compton, Senior Media Technologist at
Reuters and joint architect of the IPTC G2-Standards. "With the new Reuters
Media Connect Platform, we are now in a position to offer customers all of
our multimedia content in a common format, using the delivery mechanism of
their choice".
"This joint endorsement is a milestone for the G2-Standards which were
developed to make multimedia news exchange and event driven news management
more cost efficient and easier to use," said Stéphane Guérillot, Chairman of
the IPTC, "that is a strong signal to the market and to the system vendors to
implement the G2-Standards and the IPTC will support this effort. The IPTC
G2-Standards have been developed by large and small member news agencies to
meet a broad range of business requirements; they are already supported by
additional news organisations around the world."
About Agence France-Presse
AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage
of the events shaping our world from wars and conflicts to politics, sports,
entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology.
With 2,900 journalists spread across almost every country, AFP covers the
world 24 hours a day in six languages. AFP delivers the news in video, text,
photos, multimedia and graphics to a wide range of customers including
newspapers and magazines, radio and TV channels, web sites and portals,
mobile carriers, corporate clients as well as public institutions. Founded in
1835 under the name of Havas, AFP is the oldest press agency in the world.
www.afp.com
About The AP
The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering
fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and
formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest and most trusted source of
independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the
world's population sees news from AP.
www.ap.org
About dpa
Dpa is the largest independent news and information service provider in
Germany. The agency is jointly owned by the German media, and the business
group employs some 1100 personnel. In addition to it's internationally
published text services in German, English, Spanish and Arabic, dpa provides
image, graphic and audio news services round the clock. Its portfolio extends
to multimedia and mobile services, as well as editorial and technological
services, amongst others.
www.dpa.de
About the PA
The Press Association is the national news agency for the UK and Ireland,
providing a continuous feed of text, pictures, video and data into newsrooms
around the country.
At the heart of the media industry, the Press Association supplies
services to every national and regional daily newspaper, broadcasters, online
publishers and a wide range of commercial organisations.
Founded in 1868, the Press Association has an unrivalled reputation for
providing fast, fair and accurate information.
The Press Association is part of PA Group Limited, a private company with
27 shareholders, most of whom are national and regional newspaper publishers.
The biggest shareholders are Associated Newspaper Holdings Limited, News
International plc, Trinity Mirror plc and United Business Media plc.
www.pressassociation.com
About Reuters
Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world's
largest international multimedia news provider touching more than 1 billion
people a day. Reuters provides unbiased business, financial, national and
international news to professionals via Thomson Reuters desktops, the world's
media organizations, as well as directly to affluent business professionals
through Reuters.com and other digital platforms.
About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information
for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with
innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision
makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science
and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization.
With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan,
Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 50,000 people and operates in
over 100 countries. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto Stock
Exchange (TSX: TRI) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TRI).
www.thomsonreuters.com
About 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 organisation 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.
Media contacts: AFP - Pierre Fernandez, pierre.fernandez@afp.com, +33-1-4041-4923 AP - Jack Stokes, jstokes@ap.org, +1-212-621-1720 dpa - Helge Viehof, Viehof.Helge@dpa.com, +49-40-4113-32400 Press Association - Anne Scott, anne.scott@pressassociation.com, +44-207-963-7555 Thomson Reuters - Erin Kurtz, erin.kurtz@thomsonreuters.com, +1-646-223-8149 Thomson Reuters - Alex Honeysett, alexandra.honeysett@thomsonreuters.com, +44-207-542-8509 IPTC - Michael Steidl, office@iptc.org, +44-20-3178-4922
AFP - Pierre Fernandez, pierre.fernandez at afp.com, +33-1-4041-4923; AP - Jack Stokes, jstokes at ap.org +1-212-621-1720; dpa - Helge Viehof Viehof.Helge at dpa.com, +49-40-4113-32400; Press Association - Anne Scott , anne.scott at pressassociation.com,
+44-207-963-7555; Thomson Reuters - Erin Kurtz, erin.kurtz at thomsonreuters.com,
+1-646-223-8149; Thomson Reuters - Alex Honeysett, alexandra.honeysett at thomsonreuters.com,
+44-207-542-8509; IPTC - Michael Steidl, office at iptc.org, +44-20-3178-4922
Tags: April 13, England, France, Germany, Iptc, London, United States of America