News Writers To Get Universal Net Language

The global news reporting industry has moved so deeply into electronic media and digital formats that the trade's major international association has reportedly agreed to a new online computer language.

A Reuters report today said the Geneva-based International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) has adopted a standard for formatting electronic content, called NewsML, based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The new digital language structures multimedia news so it can be delivered to devices ranging from PCs to mobile
phones. IPTC said it was launching the first test version of NewsML and hopes to officially approve the new language in October.

The organization explained that with journalism becoming increasingly digital, and with a proliferation of database archives, NewsML is designed to assist news organizations in putting together multimedia stories, adapting them, storing them and retrieving them later.

Reuters said that NewsML will facilitate editors offering a text in different national languages or photographs, graphics or video clips in alternative formats by employing a common "vocabulary" to make interchange easier.

Reported By Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.