NewsCredit is a set of conventions for adding semantic information to news articles on web pages, for any pretty fuzzy and wide definition of “news articles” you want to use.
It is built on top of the hAtom microformat. While hAtom is primarily intended for adding syndication features to standard HTML pages, it also provides useful conventions for most of the data NewsCredit intends to provide.
NewsCredit extends hAtom by adding extra fields. hAtom and NewsCredit should be valid examples of each other.
This document will try to avoid repeating the hAtom specification as much as possible.
Some basic familiarity with the concepts behind microformats is assumed.
In General
NewsCredit uses lower case class names. Hyphens are used to increase readability.
By default, the human visible text contents of an element for a property represents the value of that property.
If an <abbr> element is used for a property, then the ‘title’ attribute of the <abbr> element is the value of the property, instead of the contents of the element, which instead provide a human presentable version of the value.
NewsCredit specific fields
These fields are NewsCredit-specific additions to those already defined by the hAtom microformat.
published-by
Optional
The organisation which published the piece, using hCard. Example :
<p>published by <a href="http://www.mediastandardstrust.org/" class="vcard url fn org">Media Standards Trust</a></p>
history
Optional.
An hcal list of changes to the document. Example :
<ol class="vcalendar history"> <li class="vevent"> <span class="summary">Removed spelling mistake</span> at <abbr class="dtstart" title="2008-03-12T08:30:00">8:30am on March 12th 2008</abbr> by <span class="vcard"><a class="url fn" href="http://www.markng.co.uk/">Mark Ng</a></span></li> </ol>
principles
using rel-principles
hAtom fields
This is a quick list of the fields already specified by hAtom, with a few notes on NewsCredit-specific details where appropriate. See the full hAtom spec for more information.
bookmark
(permalink) optional. Uses the rel-bookmark pattern.
The URL of the article. If this is not present, the URL used to access the page should be assumed.
Many sites allow a story to be accessed via multiple URLs. For example, the same story might appear in multiple sections of a newspaper. In these cases a single, canonical URL must be specified.
The url serves two purposes:
- it is a globally unique identifier, which databases may use to index and track the article.
- it provides a path to get to the original article if you have its NewsCredit information.
entry-title
required. Text.
entry-content
optional (see hAtom spec for details)
entry-summary
optional. Text.
updated
required. Uses datetime-design-pattern.
published
optional. Uses datetime-design-pattern.
author
required. Uses hCard. Where applicable, the geo-tagging features of hCard should be used to provide location information about authors. Where there are multiple people involved in the production of an article, you should include others as extra editors. The role attribute should be used to indicate what role each person played in the production of the article.
tags
optional
keywords or phrases, using rel-tag.
Examples
a fully marked up (but minimal!) article::
<div class="hentry"> <h2 class="entry-title"><a rel="bookmark" href="http://example.org/foot-heads-arms-body"> Foot Heads Arms Body </a></h2> By <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://example.org">Example Journalist</a></span> on <abbr class="published" title="2008-09-03T12:52:22+0100">September 3, 2008 at 12:52 pm</abbr> <div class="entry-content"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. </div> <ol class="vcalendar history"> <li class="vevent"> <span class="summary">Initial publication</span> at <abbr class="dtstart" title="2008-03-12T08:30:00">8:30am on March 12th 2008</abbr> by <span class="vcard"><a class="url fn" href="http://example.org/">Example Journalist</a> </span></li> </ol> This article adheres to the <a rel="code-of-practice" href="http://example.org/cop">The Example Journalist Seal of Utmost Integrity (tm)</a></div>
If you use NewsCredit, you can include a button to show that you support it. You may also choose to include the hAtom logo from the microformats site. To include our button, you can use the following code, or copy the image to your webserver and include it with any code you like :
<a href="http://newscredit.org" title="this site supports newscredit"><img src="http://newscredit.org/logos/newscreditbutton.gif" alt="NewsCredit"></a>
