Starting this month, you will see some changes that should make the AP news report more useful to you. The first change affects how we handle breaking news. The second involves a change that will help you sort certain stories more easily by topic.
Effective Tuesday, May 20, you will see a change in the APNewsAlert - our first word on breaking news. While the current APNewsAlert contains only a story body of undetermined length and cannot easily be used online, the new APNewsAlert will be standardized to a maximum of 94 characters and will contain both a headline as well as text in the story body. This will allow you to display the APNewsAlert directly on your Web site as a breaking-news headline.
You will continue to receive APNewsAlerts when a major news event has occurred, but now you have the option to display these files directly on your Web sites. This change may require some system adjustments so you can take advantage of this new feature.
Here is an example of what the new APNewsAlert will look like:
BC-APNewsAlert
Spokesman says Microsoft is walking away from its offer to buy out online portal Yahoo
SEATTLE (AP) - Spokesman says Microsoft is walking away from its offer to buy out online portal Yahoo.
The following week, on Thursday, May 29, we will be phasing in the designations MED-, SCI-, REL- and TEC- in the sluglines of medical, scientific, religion and technology stories. We'll use these designations mainly for spot news and workups of the type that would appear on newspaper or Web site science, medicine, technology and religion pages.
For instance, the designations would appear on medical journal studies, the launch of new software by a technology company or the annual meeting of a particular religious denomination.
We would not use TEC- on non-technology stories about a technology company (for example, an IPO), nor would we use MED- on a state legislature's debate over healthcare or REL- on a debate about abortion.
Other techniques to identify these stories are available through AP Exchange.
The AP
