The semantic web as a newspaper media convergence facilitator

Newspapers are evolving and this causes great changes in how newspapers reach their consumers, but also in how newspapers work internally. Advanced computerised support is needed in order to cope with the new needs, which require that machines are aware of a greater part of the underlying semantics. Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies are clear candidates for web-wide semantics. However, newspapers have made great investments in their current news management systems and their wish is to undertake a smooth transition. Our proposal is to build an ontological framework based on existing journalism and multimedia standards. These standards are based on XML technologies. Therefore, we have developed a generic XML Schema to OWL mapping, complemented with an XML to RDF one. Together, they allow reusing existing metadata that, once in a semantic space, facilitates data integration, news management and retrieval. The resulting ontological framework is being applied in the Diari Segre Media Group, which produces press, radio and television content.