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WAN 2008: AP calls for metadata as standard in US newspapers' digital content

Posted: 02/06/08 By: Laura Oliver

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Metadata should be a standard feature of digital news content in the US, a vice president of the Associated Press (AP) told an industry conference today.

The use of metadata, which involves the invisible tagging of content with the names of people and places featured within it, as standard would better serve the audience in their search for news, Jim Kennedy, vice president and director of strategic planning for AP, told the World Editors Forum.

The AP tags all content, including video items, in this way, he added.

"All of the platforms that you [the audience] use need to be connected. Some don't even link to each other," Kennedy said.

"The more that coding is standardised, the more we can link it and the more we can pass the audience through. The audience expect the news to unfold naturally from a search for a headline."

New ways of presenting and distributing content to the audience have become increasingly important to the agency, Kennedy said, as he presented findings from an international consumer study conducted by the AP.

The results of the study combined with other research led to the introduction of a new filing system for news at the agency and the development of its mobile news network.

The new system ‘Filing 1, 2, 3’ is aimed at creating different levels of content to accommodate online users, who will enter a news story at different points, on different platforms and be seeking different presentation.

Under the new system, a headline is filed first, followed by a story in the present and finally different content for specific platforms is created.

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