Semantic isn’t ‘news’ per-se… but there’s a perceptible shift away from industrial publishing models towards digital thinking. Maybe the media hysteria around Twitter tipped the old school over the edge. {Twitter is very *very* significant, but not (yet, its user base and audience is small, relative to its media footprint) for its mass adoption… but for changing the way that folk use the web… for making writers of readers, and dragging writers out of private social ghettos into the public eye.} Thomson Reuters’ OpenCalais & blogger version Tagaroo is an interesting case in point.

By adding semantic metadata to professional and amateur publishers, ThomsonReuters are breaking down a barrier between traditional news media and personal, social news channels. Giving personal users access to the same service (adapted for small scale use) is a tacit agreement that some news is best found by individual amateur reporters (isn’t it?)… and that by collaborating with every part of the news spectrum, presumably Thomson Reuters expects to get more readers for higher quality news.

Semantic publishing: simple search improvement originally appeared on TheCustomer on May 29, 2009.