By Jennifer Parrucci from IPTC member New York Times

The NewsCodes Working Group has been tirelessly working on a project to review the definitions of all terms in the MediaTopics vocabulary.

The motivation behind this work is feedback received from members using the vocabulary that some definitions are unclear, confusing or not grammatically correct. Additionally, some labels have also been found to be outdated or insensitive and have been changed.

Changing these definitions and labels is not meant to completely change the usage of the terms. Definition and label changes are meant to refine and clarify the usage.

While reviewing each definition the members of the working group have considered various factors, including whether the definition is clear, whether the definition uses the label to define itself (not very helpful) and whether there are typos or grammatical errors in the definition. Additionally, definitions were made more consistent and examples were added when possible.

Once these changes were made in English, the French, Spanish and German translations were also updated.

Currently, updates are available for three branches of Media Topics:

• arts, culture and entertainment
• weather
• conflict, war and peace

Updates can be viewed in cv format on cv.iptc.org or in the tree view on show.newscodes.org.

The working group plans to continue working on the definition review and periodically release more updates as they become available.

As announced in late April, Brendan Quinn is succeeding Michael Steidl in the position of Managing Director of IPTC in June 2018.

This change is happening right now: Brendan has taken over the responsibilities and actions of the Managing Director and Michael is available for giving advice to Brendan until the end of June.

From now on Brendan should be contacted as Managing Director. He uses the same email address that Michael used before: mdirector@iptc.org.

Note from Brendan

I’m really looking forward to working with all IPTC’s members and friends, and hope that I can make a real difference to the future of the news and media industry through my work with IPTC.

I aim to speak with as many of you as possible over the next weeks and months to find out what you as members like and don’t like about what IPTC is doing, but in the meantime, please feel free to email me via mdirector@iptc.org or find me on the members-only Slack group, and I would be happy to say hello and to hear your thoughts.

Michael and I sat down to hand over the role in early June so I now have a sense of the task before me, and I hope that I can follow up on his work but also bring a fresh energy to the organisation.

I would especially like to thank Michael for all his efforts over the last 15 years in making IPTC what it is today.

Best regards, and see you in Toronto in October if not before!

Brendan.

Note from Michael

It was a great experience to help Brendan diving into the IPTC universe with all its members and workstreams plus many contacts in the media industry. I wish you, Brendan, all the best for a great future at this organisation.

Dear all who showed interest in IPTC, it was a pleasure getting in touch with you and I hope I was able to respond in a way helping you to solve problems.

I was invited to continue as Lead of the Photo Metadata and Video Metadata Working Groups and I’m happy to take on responsibility for these workstreams. If you want to contact me from now on please use my own email address mwsteidl@newsit.biz

Best,

Michael