My notes and thoughts after participating in the New York Times - TimesOpen event on February 20th, 2009.

1. Exploring the New York Times API
Gilad Lotan Friday, Feb. 20th 2008

2. A newspaper’s roles: highlight the news that’s “fit to print”, drive
aOenMon to important issues, curate and the bestowal of status
In the search for a business model: “you pick the hat to fit the head”
“You’ve got to keep gas in the car, but sMll don’t think of business as
a tour of gas staMons. If we spend so much Mme geNng to the gas
staMon we’re going to miss all the interesMng points along the way.”
“Newspapers are not going away”

3. A long History InteracMng with Readers

4. Trends
Hyper‐Local: EveryBlock ‐local news site (relevant to the block level)
Sensors: Increasingly, applicaMons are driven by new kinds of sensors.
pa1ern recogni4on in large datasets increasingly important
Twi1er: people use it to consume and highlight newsworthy events

5. lesson learned from twiOer:
do one thing and do it well

6. API
hOp://developer.nyMmes.com/
hOp://prototype.nyMmes.com/gst/arMcleSkimmer/

7. Community API
• hOp://developer.nyMmes.com/docs/community_api/

9. ArMcle Search API
hOp://developer.nyMmes.com/docs/arMcle_search_api/
28 years of content
‐ Most recent arMcles with 'France' in the headline
‐ people most oen menMoned with George Bush in 2008
‐ recipes with associated thumbnail images
‐ First occurence of the word 'internet' (1988)
‐ how oen the term 'unemployment' was used
‐ front page arMcles that menMon 'twiOer' (11 Mmes)
‐ 2.8 million arMcles
‐ 37 searchable fields
‐ 23 navigaMonal faceOed fields

10. Facets
‐ correspond to Times controlled vocabularies
‐ staff reads all arMcles and use controlled vocabulary to tag the arMcle (if the arMcle is not really
about George Bush the arMcle won't be tagged with his name, even if he is menMoned)
‐ TimesTag API
‐ Example 1: arMcles about green energy from the business secMon that menMon Google:
hOp://api.nyMmes.com/svc/search/v1/arMcle?query=green%20energy%20nytd_secMon_facet:[Business]
%20org_facet:[GOOGLE%20INC]&api‐key=[your‐api‐key‐here]
‐ Example 2: request facets and counts for the search query:
hOp://api.nyMmes.com/svc/search/v1/arMcle?query=mortgage%20crisis&api‐key=[your‐api‐key‐
here]&facets=des_facet,per_facet,org_facet
‐ human generated facets: descripMve terms (ADVERTISING AND MARKETING), names of people,
organizaMonal names, geographic names‐ auto generated ‐ year,month,day ; material type (news,
leOer, review...) ; desk ‐ metropolitan, financial
‐ fielded search‐ date range operators supported (granular to the day)

12. Times Newswire: “one feed to rule them all”
up to the second feed of all the stories coming through the
NYTimes
Why?
‐ RSS feeds aren't updated to the very second
‐ RSS feeds aren’t always in chronological order
‐ everything all in one place (not broken up like RSS)
‐ search API doesn't offer the last hour
Future: extend this beyond the NYTimes (Boston Globe, etc…)
hOp://developer.nyMmes.com/docs/Mmes_newswire_api/

13. Times People
• Social network
• What are my friends reading?
quot;We don't want to own the social graph, but to use it in order for people to
recommend news to their friendsquot;

14. InteracMve News
hOp://projects.nyMmes.com/guantanamo
•
represent ‐ pulls in data from several APIs around the site to answer the quesMon ‐
•
quot;what are my elecMves doing?”
Team of engineers/designers siNng with the journalists
•
hOp://prototype.nyMmes.com/represent/19‐Division‐St‐New‐York‐NY‐10002/
•

15. hOp://shifd.com
•

16. Coming Soon
Campaign Finanace API ‐ adds a layer of transparency to the news arMcles
which appear on the Mmes.
Congress API ‐ data comes directly from the US congress websites ‐ data goes back from the
early 90's ‐ townhall iphone app
New York state legislature API ‐ this data is not available
electronically anywhere
NYC crime API ‐ will track homicide in the city ‐ users enter in data as they find out
about crime in the city. EveryBlock ‐ mashes up using API

17. links
hOp://www.nickbilton.com/
•
hOp://www.shifd.com/welcome
•
hOp://prototype.nyMmes.com/gst/arMcleSkimmer/
•
hOp://developer.nyMmes.com/docs/community_api
•
hOp://www.Mmschwartz.org/
•
hOp://www.nimblecode.com/
•
‐ hOp://blog.blprnt.com
‐ Ruby Gem:
hOp://github.com/harrisj/nyMmes‐arMcles/tree/masterhOp://tyn‐
search.appspot.com
‐ trending applicaMon (obama vs. clinton)