This document discusses STT-Lehtikuva's use of NewsML G2 metadata standards in their news production systems. It outlines why metadata is important for searchability, aggregation, and rights management. STT-Lehtikuva is moving to adopt the NewsML G2 standard to better package different types of digital content like text, photos, videos and their associated metadata. The document also notes some current weaknesses of NewsML G2 and challenges in using richer metadata with new types of devices and changing news consumption patterns.

1. NEWSML G2 –METADATA IN STT-
LEHTIKUVA’S NEWS PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
TuomasVenho 25.11.2010
STT-LEHTIKUVA OY

2. AGENDA
 Why we need news metadata?
 Current situation
 Next metadata step at STT-Lehtikuva
 NewsML G2 in a nutshell
 The future (challenges) with developing media environment and news
production

3. WHYWE NEED NEWS METADATA?
 ”Content without metadata has no value”
 ”Content is king” -> ”Metadata is king”
 Better searchability
 More and more aggregating
 The percentage of ”new” news is declining and more information is
based on combining data in new ways.

4. WHYWE NEED NEWS METADATA?
 Better semantics
 current problem: you find results but you don’t know what you missed
 Clear need for better metadata and richer relationship information
 These things belong together semantically
 This might be also interesting to the reader
 Etc.
 Current problem: STT-Lehtikuva covers many specific areas too
narrowly
 Better rights –management metadata would enhance the usage of other material
linked to our own material
 Micro –payments etc.

5. NEXT METADATA STEP AT STT-LEHTIKUVA
 Moving to NewsML G2 standard
 http://www.iptc.org/site/News_Exchange_Formats/NewsML-G2/
 RSS and Atom at their current state are not rich enough formats for news agency
usage
 NewsML-G2 is not a text or image mark-up format; it has no way to
mark paragraphs or headlines, for example. Instead, it is an envelope and
organizer for one or more files of almost any type.
 NewsML G2 is meant to be a “wrapper” for any types of digital content
and its metadata
 Packaging is ”built-in”

6. NEWSML G2 IN A NUTSHELL
 NewsML-G2 provides exchange formats for:
 General news: textual news, articles, photos, graphics, audio and video
can be exchanged - the News Item
 A flexible mechanism for packaging news in a structured way - the
Package Item.
 Information about concepts, used for values in controlled vocabularies -
the Concept Item - and further a format to exchange full controlled
vocabularies as a single file - the Knowledge Item.
 A wrapper around items to transmit them by any electronic means - the
News Message

7. NEWSML G2’S CURRENT WEAKNESS
 Not yet good enough support for planning information
 Planning info becoming increasingly important
 What STT is covering, how well it is covering and when
 Better planning information from the news agency helps customers to use their own
resources more efficiently
 NewsML G2 not handling planning information very well (yet)
 STT-Lehtikuva has had to ”hack” planning information into
the format <- bad for backwards compatibility in the future…

8. USING NEWSML G2 AT CLIENT SIDE
 There are some optional fields in the STT’s NewsML –format so that
customer receives the fields that it has paid for
 Some metadata are separately chargeable
 Customer’s usage of the NewsML –format varies
 STT-Lehtikuva sells specific versions of the news for print and online usage and these
versions differ from eachother
 NewsML G2 is parsed into customer’s publishing systems with XML
handling tools like XPath
 STT-Lehtikuva sends updates to news files all the time
 New challenges in parsing because of new richer relationships between news
elements

9. STT-LEHTIKUVA USES NEWSML G2 FOR…
 News themes
 Bigger news event that goes on for days, for example olympic games or elections
 Subjects
 A specific news subject like a football match
 Stories
 Event information
 Image metadata
 Graphic metadata (news graphics)
 Video metadata
 Other binary content’s metadata

10. NEW PRODUCTS, NEW WORKFLOW
 The (very challenging) need for creating new products with less
resources
 Planning information, geodata, links between materials, news packages, richer event
information,…
 Old workflows in news production are facing tremendous development
pressure
 Event information is used as planning information and vice versa.

11. NEWS CONSUMPTION ONTABLETS AND
SMART PHONES
 New portable devices for media consumption
 The ever growing need for packaging things together
 New products: animated graphics: what about its metadata?
 Location –based information
 News on higher priority to the end-user who is nearby
 New ”light-weight” editorial systems that can be used with a mobile
phone.

12. FUTURE NEEDS AND DEVELOPMENTS
 How to get feedback from stories that are sent to customers who are
using them online.
 ”Show me the most popular version of this story”
 How to further support our customers to take better use of our
planning information
 New use cases for Lehtikuva’s images in STT-Lehtikuva’s news
production
 Towards media convergence in news business
 Improved geodata
 Using geodata with location –aware devices: phones tablets etc.
 ”Show me the news from this particular area

13. THANKYOU!