extract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021

We have just released the Q3 update to Media Topics, IPTC’s subject taxonomy used for classifying news content.

Most were changes to the education branch, following our regular review cycle. We also added some missing Norwegian translations (thanks to Tor Kristian Flage at NTB) and fixed some incorrect Wikidata mappings.

The changes are listed below. All changes are in both en-GB and en-US versions unless otherwise noted.

New terms:

Label changes:

Definition changes:

Hierarchy change (in addition to those listed above):

Retired terms:

As usual, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Screenshot from IPTC's cv.iptc.org controlled vocabulary viewer showing new entries to the NewsCodes vocabulary.

In time for the 2020 Summer Olympics, soon to be held in Tokyo Japan (in 2021), we have released a new version of the Media Topics vocabulary covering all Olympic sports.

As many MediaTopics users don’t use the sports facets system, we wanted to make sure that the top-level Olympic and Paralympic sports were all represented in the main Media Topics vocabulary.

To make this possible, we have made the following changes:

New and changed labels and definitions for Olympics and Paralympics

We have added the following new sport concepts, all under Competition Discipline:

Modified labels:

We have “unretired” the following term, which was retired in 2017:

We have moved the following term:

Updated translations

In another major update we have added labels in French, Spanish and Arabic for most recently-added terms. Thanks to Anne Raynaud and her team at Agence France-Presse (AFP) for this contribution.

Another small change is that in the HTML tree view, we now mark retired concepts more clearly by visually striking out their labels and definitions.

We always welcome feedback on IPTC MediaTopics and the other NewsCodes vocabularies on the public discussion list iptc-newscodes@groups.io.

extract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021

We are pleased to announce the latest release of IPTC NewsCodes, including our main subject vocabulary for news content, IPTC MediaTopics.

This update includes:

New Media Topics terms

The new terms were requested by MediaTopics users Ritzau in Denmark, NTB in Norway and AFP in France.

  • drowning (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001321)
  • men (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001328)
  • poisoning (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001322)
  • sports coaching (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001323)
  • sports management and ownership (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001324)
  • sports officiating (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001325)
  • torture (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001320)
  • women (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001327)
  • women’s rights (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001326)

Retired Media Topics terms

  • accomplishment (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000497). Use award and prize (20000498) or record and achievement (20000499) instead.
  • people (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000502). Use more specific terms instead.

Label changes to Media Topics

Please note that we only ever make changes to labels to make the meaning clearer, we never change the meaning of a term.

  • transfer -> sports transaction (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20001148)
  • minister (government) -> minister and secretary (government) (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000613)
  • “athletics, track & field” -> “athletics” in en-GB and “track and field” in en-US (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000827)
  • plant -> flowers and plants (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000507)
  • imperial and royal matters -> royalty (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000506)

Media Topics hierarchy moves

  • “award and prize” (20000498) and record and achievement (20000499) were moved to the top level “human interest” term because we retired the parent term “accomplishment”
  • birthday (20001238), celebrity (20000505), high society (20000504) and “human mishap” (20000503) were moved to the top level “human interest” term to under the top level “human interest” term because we retired the parent term “people”.

Definition changes in Media Topics

  • Changes under “human interest” branch: animal (20000500), anniversary (20001237), award and prize (20000498), ceremony (20000501), funeral and memorial service (20001235), wedding (20001236), birthday (20001238)
  • Grammar fixes in en-GB and en-US descriptions for 20000037, 03000000, 20000140, 20000215, 20000228, 20000279, 20000321, 20000327, 20000390, 20000426, 20001229, 20001220, 20000504, 20000339, 20000571, 20000575, 20000590, 20000591, 20000600, 20000604, 20000619, 20000630, 20000658, 20000852

Changes to mappings from MediaTopics to other vocabularies

We had a major review of MediaTopic to Wikidata mappings, thanks to Lucy Butcher from Wirecutter (part of The New York Times, an IPTC member) for her contributions. Many terms have had their WIkidata mappings edited or added. In the near future, we are planning to add mappings from Wikidata back to NewsCodes.

Changes to other NewsCodes vocabularies

The Genre vocabulary had a major update, the second half of the review that was started in the February release.

New Genre terms:

  • Live Coverage (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/LiveCoverage)
  • Preview (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Preview)

Retired terms:

  • Scener (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Scener) – use From the Scene instead
  • Text only (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Text_only) – Use Transcript and Verbatim instead
  • Update (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Update) – Use Synopsis or Briefing instead
  • Wrap (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Wrap) – Use Synopsis or Briefing instead
  • Wrapup (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Wrapup) – Use Synopsis or Briefing instead

Label (and definition) changes:

  • Daybook -> Planner (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Daybook)
  • Listing of Facts -> Fact Box (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/ListingOfFacts)
  • Summary -> Briefing (https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/Summary)

Definition changes for: Biography, Birth Announcement, Curtain Raiser, Exclusive, Feature, Fixture, Forecast, From the Scene, Interview, Music, Obituary, Opinion, Polls and Surveys, Press Release, Press-Digest, Profile, Program, Question and Answer Session, Quote, Raw Sound, Response to a Question, Results Listings and Statistics, Retrospective, Review, Side bar and Supporting Information, Special Report, Synopsis.

As usual, all changes can be seen:

Please let us know if you spot any problems. If you are an IPTC member you can post issues, questions and suggestions to the NewsCodes Working Group list at iptc-newscodes-dev@groups.io.

extract from IPTC MediaTopics Feb 2021We have just released a new version of IPTC NewsCodes, which includes many changes to Media Topics.

This is the first major update since August 2020 (although we released new versions in September and October 2020 to add translations of new terms).

The changes are detailed below:

New translations for Media Topics

After many requests, we have now added an “en-US” language version, based on a contribution by Jeff Brown of Fourth Estate. Thanks Jeff!

Mostly it simply changes British English words to US English, such as “centre”/”center” and “programme”/”program”, but there are a few more substantive changes around cinema / movies and changing “holiday” to “vacation”. Also where Jeff had suggested changes to definitions, we often changed them for both British and US English.

en-GB will still be the primary language for Media Topics, but we will keep the en-GB and en-US versions in sync as we make changes.

New Media Topics terms

These were suggested by our collaborators from Ritzau via iMatrics, NTB, TT and AFP. Thanks to all.

Please note that the new terms only exist in en-GB and en-US right now, more translations will be added soon.

Update on 15 March: we have now added translations in Danish (thanks to Ritzau and iMatrics), Nowegian (thanks to NTB), Swedish (thanks to TT) and Portuguese for Brazil and Portugal (thanks to Priberam and Lusa).

Update on 12 April: We have now also added Chinese and German translations for these new and updated terms and definitions. Thanks very much to members Xinhua and dpa for their help!

Retired Media Topics terms

  • sports facilities (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000559 (retired)) – use medtop:20001126 “sport venue” instead
  • inline skating (http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/20000967 (retired)) – use medtop:20001155 “roller sports” instead

Label changes to Media Topics 

Please note that we only ever make changes to labels to make the meaning clearer, we never change the meaning of a term.

Media Topics hierarchy moves

Definition changes in Media Topics

Changes to other NewsCodes vocabularies

As usual, the changes can be seen:

Please let us know if you spot any problems. If you are an IPTC member you can post issues, questions and suggestions to the NewsCodes Working Group list at iptc-newscodes-dev@groups.io.

Extract of IPTC Media Topic vocabularyThe NewsCodes Working Group is happy to announce the August 2020 update to IPTC NewsCodes.

Here’s an overview of the changes in this release:

Namerole vocabulary changes

Media Topics vocabulary changes

Hierarchy changes:

Label and definition changes:

New terms:

NewsCodes Guidelines changes

  • Fix broken link and added FAQ about contributing suggestions.

 

As always, HTML browseable versions of the MediaTopics can be found at https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsCodes/treeview/mediatopic/mediatopic-en-GB.html and an Excel version at https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsCodes/IPTC-MediaTopic-NewsCodes.xlsx.

Thanks very much to our Working Group members and contributors, especially Ritzau in Denmark and Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia, for their suggestions and support.

Update on 16 September 2020: Chinese translations of new terms are now added.

Please note that the textual changes are currently available in the Danish (dk), Chinese (zh-Hans), English (en-GB), Portuguese (pt-PT and pt-BR for Brazil), Norwegian (no) and Swedish-language (se) versions. More translated versions of the MediaTopics NewsCodes will be made available when their maintainers have updated them.

At the 2020 IPTC Spring Meeting in May, the IPTC Standards Committee endorsed version 2.29 of our flagship news markup and syndication standard, NewsML-G2.

Version 2.29, including the 2.29 XML Schema, example documents and schema documentation, can be downloaded from https://iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/2.29/ or from the NewsML-G2 GitHub repository at https://github.com/iptc/newsml-g2.

The NewsML-G2 Guidelines have been updated to reflect the latest changes in the schema. The NewsML-G2 Specification will be updated soon.

Summary of changes in NewsML-G2 2.29

Below we summarise the changes made in version 2.29. A full change history of NewsML-G2 up to and including version 2.28 is documented in Changes to NewsML-G2 and related Standards section of the NewsML-G2 Guidelines.

Affiliation for organisation details

Up to an including v2.28, Affiliations could be expressed only for Persons, using <personDetails>. Recent use cases pointed to the need for Affiliations to be added to Organisations. In order to do this, a new Property Type, OrganisationAffiliationType, has been created. This is a copy of PersonAffiliationType, with the addition of a new attribute group, FlexOrganisationPropType, which enables @role/@roleuri to be used.

Example: Organisation affiliated with another Organisation

Acme Financials is a member of Financial Group ABC

<assert qcode="example-org:123">
    <name>Acme Financials</name>
    <organisationDetails>
        <affiliation role="example-affrole:memberOf" type="cpnat:organisation" qcode="example-fingroup:ABC"/>

Example: Person affiliated with an Organisation

John Smith is:

  • Employed by Club A

  • Supporter of Club B

<assert qcode="example-pers:22">
    <name>John Smith</name>
    <personDetails>
        <affiliation role="example-affrole:employedBy" type="cpnat:organisation" qcode="example-club:A"/>
        <affiliation role="example-affrole:supporterOf" type="cpnat:organisation" qcode="example-club:B"/>

Retiring a Scheme

In its initial design, NewsML-G2 provided for Concepts to be retired, by using the @retired attribute of conceptId. As the standard has matured, we have reached the point where entire Schemes need to be retired. The issue, as with retiring Concepts, is how this can be done without breaking existing NewsML-G2 Items.

There are two changes that support this use case:

  • Add the attributes @schemecreated, @schememodified and @schemeretired to scheme to be used in Catalogs

  • Add the attributes @schemecreated, @schememodified and @schemeretired to schemeMeta to be used in Knowledge Items.

For details, see Scheme Metadata and <scheme> properties.

 

For any questions regarding NewsML-G2, please post to the NewsML-G2 discussion forum.

 

Video Metadata Hub includes a core set of properties including descriptive, administrative and rights-based information.

The IPTC Video Metadata Working Group is proud to release the latest version of its mapping standard, Video Metadata Hub. Version 1.3 was approved by the IPTC Standards Committee on 13 May 2020.

“We are pleased to release the new version of IPTC Video Metadata Hub,” said Pam Fisher, Lead of the Video Metadata Working Group. “The changes bring improved clarity, add compatibility with and mapping to EIDR (Entertainment ID Registry), and update the mapping to EBUcore for 2020.  These changes are part of our commitment to friction-free adoption across all sectors of the media landscape, supporting video interchange.”

Video Metadata Hub includes two components: a core set of recommended metadata properties to be used across all video content, and mappings that show how to implement those core properties in a series of other video standards, including Apple Quicktime, MPEG-7, Sony XDCAM MXF and SMPTE P2 from Panasonic, Canon VideoClip XML, XMP, IPTC Photo Metadata and NewsML-G2, PBCore, schema.org, In VideoMetadataHub 1.3 we now add a mapping to EIDR Data Fields 2.0.

All feedback on Video Metadata Hub should be directed to the public discussion group at https://groups.io/g/iptc-videometadata.

Extract of IPTC Media Topic vocabularyThe IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has been very busy in the last six months. At the IPTC Spring 2020 Meeting, we announced three new language translations of our core Media Topics vocabulary, many term updates, and a new NewsCodes Guidelines document.

Thanks to Ritzau, we added Danish translations of Media Topics in March. Since then we have also added Chinese (Simplified) translations of Media Topics, with great thanks to the team at Xinhua News Agency. We also received a contribution of IPTC Media Topics in Norwegian from NTB.

You can see HTML browsable versions of the new languages here:

As usual, IPTC Media Topics (and all other NewsCodes vocabularies) are available in SKOS format (RDF/XML and Turtle) as well as HTML and as NewsML-G2 Knowledge Items.

The Working Group has also made some updates to the vocabularies based on suggestions from Ritzau, Xinhua and NTB and also some fixes (such as removing duplicate wikidata mappings) suggested by ABC Australia. As with all of our MediaTopics updates, we have not changed the meaning of any existing terms, but we add new terms, clarify the meaning of terms and move terms to put them in more appropriate places in the hierarchy.

IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines document We have also developed the NewsCodes Guidelines document,  which explains what are the IPTC NewsCodes, how we decide whether to add new terms, how the NewsCodes are maintained and how you can contribute suggestions. We welcome comments and suggestions on the guidelines document, please get in touch via the public iptc-newscodes@groups.io discussion group with your thoughts.

And finally, we have made some updates to the Genre NewsCodes vocabulary, to include some suggestions from members plus some suggestions based on our work with the Trust Project and the Journalism Trust Initiative. We have added genres for Fact Check, Satire, Sponsored content and more. Please see the genres vocabulary at http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/.

The ninjs generator tool has been updated to the new ninjs 1.3

At last week’s Spring Meeting IPTC updated the News in JSON standard (ninjs) to version 1.3. The JSON schema of the new version can be accessed at https://www.iptc.org/std/ninjs/.

The updated schema now has support for trust indicators, genre, other types of headlines and a way for providers to enter their own alternative IDs.

Version 1.3 is backwards-compatible with previous versions of ninjs and makes no breaking changes.

It includes the following new properties and structures:

  • genre follows the structure of other objects in ninjs with the possibility to add a code, a name and a reference to a scheme of the code to indicate the genre of the news item.
  • trustindicator is also an object with properties to indicate and point at documents describing the providers status according to defined trust indicators. Read more about trust indicators here.
  • There has been a demand for other types of headlines, such as “subhead” or “mobile headline”. The original headline property is still in the schema. But in version 1.3 it is now accompanied by a headline_ construct which works in the same manner as body_ and description_. Providers can now add other types of headlines and name them to indicate format and/or type.
  • altid is a property that is open to the provider’s own definition of both names and types of sub-properties. That way providers can include alternative IDs as they originally appeared.
  • The 1.3 schema also includes a $standard object which contains properties for name, version and reference to the schema that the item follows. This is not (yet) supported in software tools but the idea is that tools could look up the schema for which a document is written, similarly to the way that XML allows users to state the XML Schema that should validate a document.

The user guide, sample generator and GraphQL sample have all been updated according to the 1.3 additions.

ninjs 1.3 will soon be included in the SchemaStore.org JSON Schema repository, to aid with editing and validation of ninjs 1.3 files in a range of popular code editors such as Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio 2013+, IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm and PHPStorm.

For more information, please see:

If you have any questions or comments, please contact the News in JSON Working Group via the public ninjs discussion group, or contact IPTC via the Contact Us form.

In late February we pushed the latest update to Media Topics, IPTC’s main controlled vocabulary for subject classification (also known as a taxonomy).

This release includes a translation of NewsCodes into the Danish language.

On behalf of the NewsCodes Working Group and its chair Jennifer Parruci, we would like to say thanks very much to Mette-Lene Østergaard and Mads Petersen from the Danish news agency Ritzau in Denmark for all their work on making the translation.

It’s available from all the usual places:

The IPTC Media Topic NewsCodes vocabulary is now available in 9 languages: Arabic, British English, Danish, French, German, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

We are working with partners on several more language translations coming very soon. If you would like to work with us on contributing a new language translation of IPTC Media Topics or any other IPTC standard, please contact us!