Link: Explaining NYT’s API plans

The news late last week that The New York Times plans to release an open API this summer didn’t fully register with me over the long weekend.  That’s application programming interface and an open one will allow users to mash up NYT data with other information and potentially improve on it. Thankfully, J.D. Lasica offers a simple explanation of the move and its potential significance here.
Lassica urges news organizations to pay attention. “Because the salvation of the news industry—if there is to be one—will come not from corporate board rooms but in unleashing the pent-up power of the citizenry as one leg of a multipronged participatory media strategy.”

Update: Amy Gahran offers a good explanation of the Times’ plan over at Poynter’s E-media Tidbits. Gahran further argues that news organizations need to learn to make their information (i.e. stories) more mashable to make them fully useable and spreadable on the Web.

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