Comments for First New York Times API is Live - Here's Why it Matters

First New York Times API is Live - Here's Why it Matters

2008-10-14T22:27:21Z

The much-anticipated first Application Programming Interface (API) from the New York Times went live today, according to a post on the company's blog Open - All the code that's fit to printf(). First up is a campaign finance data API and next is a movie review API. Also available is a database management program initially developed for internal use at the NY Times.

The Times quietly announced in May that it would soon be publishing APIs, which are means by which outside developers can access NY Times data for use in other applications, interfaces and mashups. We believe that steps like this are going to prove key if big media is to thrive in the future.

]]> What's In the Campaign API?

The Times describes its initial offering like this:

With the Campaign Finance API, you can retrieve contribution and expenditure data based on United States Federal Election Commission filings. Campaign finance data is public and is therefore available from a variety of sources, but the developers of the Times API have distilled the data into aggregates that answer most campaign finance questions. Instead of poring over monthly filings or searching a disclosure database, you can use the Times Campaign Finance API to quickly retrieve totals for a particular candidate, see aggregates by ZIP code or state, or get details on a particular donor.

The Campaign Finance API is currently limited to presidential campaign data. Future versions will include house and senate campaign data.

The demonstration application built with this API is a simple mashup of the campaign contributions and the Google Charts API, to create a graph of contributions by zip code. You know what we'd like to see? A Greasemonkey script that shows political contributions for a geographic area whenever a user hovers over that area's name on a web page. Would that be cool, or what?

The possibilities are truly endless.

We're very excited to see what kinds of data the Times opens up next.

Why APIs are Important for Newspapers

The UK Guardian is the best example of a newspaper that understands the opportunities in becoming a broker of machine-readable data, instead of just human readable content. Reuters is doing something similar with it's Calais program. (Calais is an RWW sponsor.)

Reporting is no longer a scarce commodity. It's hard for these huge news organizations to do it faster, cheaper or even as well as a whole web of new media producers around the world. They may be among the top sources for original content still today, but considering the direction technology is moving in - that's not a safe bet for the future.

One thing that big media still does have a particularly good share of, though, is information processing resources and archival content. The Times' campaign contribution API is a good example of this. The newspaper is far better prepared to organize that raw information, and perhaps offer complimentary content, than any individual blogger or small news publisher.

They, along with everyone's favorite API management service Mashery (again powering another exciting API), have the skills and the draw to offer this data in a way that a lot of developers will find compelling. When developers create applications that use their data, the Times will once again assert itself as an essential part of our information landscape - both in mind share and in inbound links/Search Engine Optimization for their online content.

Further, the times are changing and if you're not publishing for those readers of yours who happen to be robots - you're missing out on an important constituency.

We're really excited about the New York Times APIs and we look forward to seeing what kinds of innovative things the development community can do with them.

Comment from Elias Bizannes on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T23:05:19Z

"We believe that steps like this are going to prove key if big media is to thrive in the future."

Hell yeah - that is massive and well picked up Marshall. The web has now evolved beyond 'destination' sites as a business model. News organisations need to harness the two emerging business models - platforms and networks

Whilst we've seen lots of people trying the platform model (as aggregators - after all, that is what a traditional newspaper has been in society), this is the first real example I have seen of the heritage media doing the network model.

The network model means your business thrives by people using *other* peoples sites and services. It sounds counter intuitive but it's the evolution of the information value chain

Comment from Jed on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T23:14:56Z

Awesome! I've been thinking about ways to encourage the govt to make data available via APIs. It never occurred to me that newspapers/media companies would have an incentive to take it upon themselves to do so. This is fantastic.

Comment from Chris on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T23:22:54Z

Dude, I wanna see this from stats.com. I get goosebumps when I think of the apps that could be written with live, up to the minute sports statistics! Ok, not goosebumps, but you catch my drift.

Go Dodgers!

Comment from Chris Lynn on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T23:39:53Z

Wow! Great explanation of the system, Marshall!

Nothing gets me more excited than the distributed web! The new API distribution method seems to be the modern day version of the Associated Press--a way editors (and possibly consumers) can share content from one source.

Wondering who will be the first PR firm to distribute (or make available) their clients' content in this way.

Comment from Metroknow on 2008-10-14

2008-10-15T00:36:26Z

Definitely exciting news - hopefully the other struggling print media will follow suit.

Comment from Dan on 2008-10-14

2008-10-15T01:10:06Z

Chris, MLB's XML is available for free. http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/

Comment from Vineet Gupta on 2008-10-14

2008-10-15T02:15:47Z

A perfect coincidence that the NY Times API launches the same day as Daylife Enterprise API. The talk about the NYTimes API few months back was one of the reasons that convinced us to launch this product and it lets any publisher have their own API - http://enterpriseapi.daylife.com/

-- Vineet
Daylife

Comment from Tim on 2008-10-14

2008-10-15T02:47:46Z

This is interesting. Will definitely need to check it out

Comment from Bernard Lunn on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T12:37:00Z

This is a great move and shows real leadership from NYT - my favorite daily read. It is a brave move, totally counter intuitive for a huge brand and great destination site. This is the kind of leadership that great companies show when times are changing.

Comment from Daniel Tunkelang on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T15:33:08Z

Great to see the NYT moving forward! Though I'm curious if / when they'll allow commercial use of their APIs. http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/faq#9

Some of my thoughts on the subject: http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/10/14/20-means-give-to-get/

Comment from Juha on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T21:27:56Z

I liked the gist of the story - news organisations having APIs looks like a very interesting thing indeed, I have to take issue with this statement:

"It's hard for these huge news organizations to do it faster, cheaper or even as well as a whole web of new media producers around the world. They may be among the top sources for original content still today, but considering the direction technology is moving in - that's not a safe bet for the future."

For starters, "faster and cheaper" doesn't usually go together with "quality". Timeliness is important, but what is it worth if all you do is rushing out material hoping to be ahead of the competition at all costs? You end up with an echo-chamber of indistinguishable and often unverified reports that bounce around the intarweb and blogs. If that's new media, then I can see a huge opportunity in doing stuff the other way around.

I'm sure Excel-surfing and cost-cutting newspaper proprietors would love to have technology that makes their publications the top source of original "content" (nasty word, that) and in the process, renders those inconvenient journo drones with expertise, experience and that peculiar human touch redundant.

Perhaps one day such technology will be available, but I'm not sure we'll be better off for it.

Comment from Matthew Cashmore on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T22:51:55Z

Fantastic to see this live after the amazing work the dev team did at Mashed08 in London this year.

Comment from jl kilgore on 2008-10-26

2008-10-26T15:26:05Z

Help me. I am not as quick-footed as those commentors above. The advantage of API as I understand it is that it posts public domain documents that would otherwise be impossible to retrieve. Does it also allow wikipedia-type sharing and editing? I'm not stupid (I hope) just woefully ignorant. I try hard to stay relevant with technology's use but it isn't easy.