10 July 2002: News Industry Upgrades NITF XML Schema

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) approved an upgrade to its News Industry Text Format (NITF) standard at its summer meeting in California last week.

NITF Version 3.1 adds news management functionality that provides publishers with an easier and more accurate way to handle wire service update or “writethru" stories, corrections, eliminations and advance stories. NITF became an IPTC standard in 1998 and has been enhanced since.

IPTC delegates last week also discussed a new standard for delivering sports data called SportsML, or Sports Markup Language. SportsML allows publishers to finely categorize sports stories and statistics, providing their online readers with greater personalization. It would also help print publishers format sports page agate more quickly and easily.

The IPTC is expected to approve SportsML version 1.0 as a standard at its October meeting. SportsML is being designed to work with NITF and NewsML, another IPTC standard.

The IPTC, based in Windsor, U.K., comprises major publishers and wire services from around the world, as well as newspaper industry vendors and news syndicators.