NewsQ Activity Area: Technical Definitions
Published: June 16, 2020
One way to classify journalistic content is according to genre. Genre can include clarifying the difference between news and opinion, as well as defining areas of topical interest such as entertainment, crime, and health reporting.
To support explorations around journalistic content —one of the NewsQ database classes — and how it might be incorporated into news ranking and recommendation systems, we list a few existing resources below for reference. Notes related to the genre of opinion are also highlighted to support discussions in our News Ranking Review Panel activities.
1) International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), “IPTC NewsCodes — Genre — Human Readable Concept Data,” 2000-2020. (link to document, link to interactive mapping)
- Includes types such as Opinion, Background, Birth Announcement.
- A proposal exists to link classifications with Schema.org and the Trust Project in the International Press Telecommunication Council, “Public draft for comment: ‘Expressing Trust and Credibility Information in IPTC Standards,'” 6 April 2020. (link to document)
2) New York Times, “Readers’ guide,” [2014-2018]. (link to archived document)
- Includes types such as News Analysis, Reporter’s Notebook, Op-Ed Contributor. States: “All articles, columns, editorials and contributions in the newspaper are subject to the same requirements of factual accuracy.”
3) Schema.org, “NewsArticle Type.” (link to document).
- More specific types can be found at the bottom of the article: AnalysisNewsArticle, AskPublicNewsArticle, BackgroundNewsArticle, OpinionNewsArticle, ReportageNewsArticle, ReviewNewsArticle
4) The Trust Project, “Indicator: Type of Work Labels,” last updated 13 August 2018. (link to document)
- Includes News, NewsArticle, Opinion, Analysis, Satire.