On Friday, the UK's Media Standards Trust called on news organisations to adopt consistent microformats for online content, as the Associated Press and the Media Standards Trust launch a new proposed format via Value Added News.

The new microformat "effectively encapsulates content and metadata so that critical information about every news story is available," according to a press release. This includes what the story is about, where it was written, by whom, where it was published, the news principles it adheres to and any usage rights associated with it. It hopes to become a standard to be used by anyone producing news content, and the Media Standards Trust has launched the Value Added News site to "coordinate discussion of the proposed news formats, host technical specifications, explain the benefits and detail how other organizations can integrate news formats into their own content."

The advantages that Value Added News claims are making content easier to find with value added search, giving proper credit to the author, protecting use of news content, making news principles transparent, and unlock the value of news archives. For search, it is "like the equivalent of adding signposts, postcodes and house numbers," the website says, allowing more search options, such as filtered or targeted. It would allow more information to be displayed within search results, such as the usage info, which helps with protecting copyright. Adding "news principles" helps to distinguish news from commercial content.

The microformat is being tested on all AP text content, with news stories available in the new format via the AP Developer API, which also is in beta testing, and AP's Web Feeds platform, an internet-based distribution platform for AP. Value Added News is already being piloted by OpenDemocracy.net. Google announced in May that it would be supporting microformats and using some of the additional metadata in its search snippets: "so we hope that web publishers will help us by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google," said the Google blog.

Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, said in the press release that "signposting online news consistently is good for news organisations, and good for the public". Todd Martin, AP vice president of Technology Development added that "we think this news format extends microformat efforts to date, by applying the basic principles of simplicity, reuse and semantic presentation specifically for news content".

Improving search engine visibility is something that news outlets are keen to embrace, and growing concerns about misuse of copyrighted material means that many are likely to be enthusiastic about being able to track their content online. The Associated Press recently announced plans to track its material more closely and to crack down on misappropriation; presumably involvement in ventures such as this is part of that effort.

Source: Media Standards Trust press release, Value Added News