NewsML G2 Standard Overview

We read newspapers every morning, watch TV news every night, or click articles from news box on web portals.
By consuming new contents, we absorb the latest news and information of interest.
However, the trend of consuming news contents is becoming more personalized, being grouped.
In line with the trend, technology concerning sending out customized news contents has been a hot potato in news industry.
To meet the need of news consumers, news exchange format standard to cut down the circulation expense was needed for not only news providers who send out contents, but also web portals or print syndications who distribute contents secondarily.
In accordance with this need, IPTC has defined a news exchange standard called NeswML 1.0 based on XML in 2000. In February, 2008, G2 Family of Standards with simplified but stronger function was newly introduced.
G2 Family of Standards has simpler contents data structure compared to NewsML 1.x. This provides a set of metadata describing news contents into semantic web and a business model for news industry to provide knowledge based service.
G2 Family of Standards of the IPTC consists of 3 sets of standards like below.
All standards are based on News Architecture (NAR) which works as a common framework in data structure and exchange.
NewsML-G2 is a standard to exchange news contents in any kind.
EventML-G2 is a format for event information such as Iran-Iraq war, Beijing Olympics.
SportsML-G2 is a format to share sports data with news contents.

Expected results of NewsML G2

Expected results of G2-standards are described like below.

Firstly, G2-standard will hold a place as the fastest, the most accurate and the most appropriate standard for news provider, consumer and software vendor in exchanging, distributing multimedia new contents.

Multimedia contents like video are growing fast and the percentage of text in news contents is lowering down.
Moreover, news supply pattern has been changing from B2B (press – press, press – company) to B2X (press – press, press – individual, press – portal, press – company).
G2-standard was designed to fit the strategy of contents industry aiming Multi-media, Multi-channel, and Multi-platform.
Therefore, G2-standard provides way more powerful function unlike NewsML 1.x version.

Secondly, G2-standard enhances the value of system investment and varies channels between potential information provider partner and other providers on the inside.

Adopting G2-standard is in accordance with 3M strategy mentioned above.
In addition, press that adopted NewsML 1.x, have been successful.
Therefore, it is evident that the press adopting G2-standard will be highly productive and convenient.

Thirdly, G2-standards process metadata in a standardized way to cut down labor and cost for maintenance.
It also enables improving the quality of additional information from news contents.

Former NewsML version focuses on news exchange format rather than metadata structure unlike G2-standards.
G2-standards define semantic metadata structure to improve the quality of news contents.
This can be applied to semantic web to provide intelligent web service with news search.

NewsML G2 Structure

G2-Standard is composed of 4 core items.
News Item and Concept Item refer to the core data structure of G2-standards covering all information related to contents including news.
PackageItem makes connections of information between contents and provides contents grouping technology.
Knowledge Item builds knowledge base by integrating distributed information resources into semantic interoperability.

Picture below shows how the 4 core items-News Item, Package Item, Concept Item, Knowledge Item- are interacting with one another.
This API service provides integrated search results from Yonhapnews and client companies to users and external developers.
The result is given in the form of XML, JSON(P).
Users can share useful information of selected news contents via blog or web service of their companies.

Pic) News Architecture managing 4 items organically.

News Architecture (NAR) is neutral to technology application befitting the spirit of NewsML.
XML schema provided by IPTC can be developed with object-oriented softwares like Java.
NAR aims to structuralize, manage and link news contents based on semantic web.
In this way, G2-standards is expected to attract broader users in that it provides simplified data composition and varied additional functions.