NY Times Starting To Recognize That Data Is News

from the all-the-data-that's-fit-to-release dept

Last year, we pointed out that, after quite a slow (and, at times, backwards looking) start, it appeared that the NY Times was finally figuring out how to truly embrace the web. That meant more than just putting its newspaper online, but taking advantage of the unique opportunities opened up by the web. However, there was still plenty of room for improvement, but it appears that the NY Times continues to move in that direction. Two years ago, we wrote about how newspapers should start freeing up their data via APIs so that others could make useful applications out of it. News organizations often have a tremendous amount of useful data that others might not have access to. Putting it to good use by opening up an API would be a truly valuable service.

And that's exactly what the NY Times appears to be doing, if only on a limited scale (for now). It's set up an API for campaign finance data, allowing anyone to build useful tools or visualizations on top of it. And, that's not all, they're also getting ready to release an API for movie reviews. In other words, the NY Times is definitely recognizing the value in not just freeing up their stories, but making core underlying data totally accessible and useful.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..