News Agencies Approve XML-Based Tagging SystemNews Agencies Approve XML-Based Tagging System

The world's major news agencies, in meetings of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), have approved a plan to expand their use of XML technology by improving the tags and data sets they use for sharing news.

In an announcement Friday, the IPTC said the convened agencies had approved further development of NewsML 2, an XML-based markup language that will lead to easier sharing of text, photos, graphics, and other media.

"NewsML 2 will revolutionize the way news can be shared," said Walter Baranger of the New York Times in a statement. "Newspapers and Web sites that receive news can instantly see related articles and graphics the way the original editors intended."

Before this week's IPTC meeting in Milan, Italy, the IPTC released its SportsML 1.6 and demonstrated ways in which SportsML can benefit from the soon-to-be-released NewsML 2 framework. The examples featured new demonstrations of content packaging and cross-linking using the new solution.

The IPTC is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers, and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world.