AP Exchange Community Blog

Search for News by Concept

I'd like to draw to your attention a powerful new feature we've enabled in AP Exchange to help editors find more relevant news faster. We can now craft searches using concepts and not just keywords.

Searching by concept is a very easy way to zero-in on locally relevant content faster. Here's how to find news in AP Exchange using this approach.

All of the concepts that are now live are listed below. To search any of them, preface the search with subjectname= and then add the concept. For example, to find all the news about women's health, type subjectname="women's health". Note, if the concept contains two or more words, please use quotes.

Economy
Architecture
Art
Award shows
Books
Celebrity
Dance
Fairs and festivals
Fashion shows
Games
Media
Movies
Music
Nightlife
Performing arts
Theater
Accidents
Disaster response
Explosions
Natural disasters
Crime
Oddities
Transportation
War and unrest
Alternative medicine
Children's health
Dentistry
Diseases and conditions
Drugs
Fitness and exercise
Health care costs
Medical ethics
Medical research
Men's health
Nutrition
Public health
Seniors' health
Women's health
Education
Religion
Social issues
Automobile racing
Baseball
Basketball
Boxing
Cricket
Cycling
Football
Golf
Hockey
Horse racing
Soccer
Tennis
Track and field
College sports
Doping
High school sports
Women's sports
Consumer electronics
Aerospace technologies
Agricultural technologies
Automotive technologies
Biotechnology
Construction technologies
Educational technologies
Entertainment technologies
Food preparation technologies
Green technologies
Materials technologies
Medical technologies
Transportation technologies
Information technologies
Internet technologies
Wireless technology
Technology issues

Help for Searches Using Special Characters

We have a special character issue to sort out, but in the interim if you are searching for terms with the ampersand or apostrophes, drop the full term in between quotation marks. For example,   "Mother's Day"  or "Texas A&M". We want to eventually avoid putting these searches between quote marks and will introduce this in an upcoming release.

AP Exchange Clears 16,000 Users

We're very pleased with the response to AP Exchange. We are happy to report that in October, we surpassed 16,000 users. This means over 16,000 editors and reporters in the US are using AP Exchange to work with the AP wire. Thank you for this support!

New Features Planned for AP Exchange

We're preparing for the next release of AP Exchange. We try our best to keep our ears to the ground to learn what editors want and need in this new system. That's why feedback is so important to us. Currently, we plan on releasing new features in about a month - mid-November. Here's a sneak peak at some of the things you'll see:

1. Story and Photo Download History - This is a big request from editors. With many editors in the same newsroom using AP Exchange, it becomes important to see if a colleague has already downloaded a photo or story. You'll now be able to see who did.

2. Shared Saved Search - A great feature. You can create a saved search and share it with colleagues. Perhaps you have someone who is very good at building searches in Exchange. That search pro will now be able to set up a search and make it appear in your version of AP Exchange.

3. Jump To Pagination - Finally...no longer will you have to scroll through search results one page at a time. You'll be able to jump pages...from 2 to 5 back to 3 to 8 and so on. Much faster and much friendlier.

4. Newsroom Account Management - Another handy tool. Certain users in each newsroom will be able to create accounts for new users or delete accounts for staffers who have left. This is a great security measure and a time saver.

Those are the big changes. Hope they sound good. Can't wait to get them live in November.

Great Example of Finding Local Content with AP Exchange

I wanted to share example of how AP Exchange can help you discover great local content on the AP wire.

I did a search for a local community, Glen Ridge, NJ. The following story about the Boston half marathon appears. Under normal circumstances, papers covering northern NJ would probably never look at the story. Why? Well, for starters the dateline is Boston, third the headline is about a Kenyan and fourth the slug is 'Half Marathon'.

But, waaaaay down at the bottom is the reference to not only the Glen Ridge marathoner, but another from the community of Pt Pleasant, NJ. It's literally buried the second to last 'graph.

Now, no one wants to run searches every day for all the towns in your publishing area. That's what saved searches do. Set it up once and see what comes back. A local community saved search is a wire well worth setting up and checking daily.

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Kenyan sets record in Boston half marathon

BOSTON (AP) _ Tom Nyariki of Kenya won his first Boston half marathon and set a course record, edging Samuel Ndereba on Sunday.

Nyariki burst ahead of his fellow Kenyan down the final stretch. Ndereba, the 2006 winner, had hoped to set on an elusive course record in this year's Boston Athletic Association half marathon.

Instead it was Nyariki who set a new record 1:02:19. Ndereba finished less than a second later. Both bested Luke Metto's 2004 record of 1:02:57. Surprise third-place finisher Martin Fagan of Ireland, a 2006 graduate of nearby Providence College, finished with a time of 1:03:04.

Edna Kiplagat of Kenya held off Caroline Chepkorir in the women's race, winning with a time of 1:13:35. Kathy Newberry of Williamsburg, Va. finished third at 1:16:43.

With a laugh, Ndereba thanked race organizers for inviting Nyariki, who, at 36, boasts a lengthy resume on long-distance tracks. Not until 2005 did Nyariki begin running marathons; Sunday's event was his second official attempt at a half marathon.

"I love the guy, and I know the guy is very tough," Ndereba said, "because he's a very good guy in track."

Nyariki credited that experience for his burst down the final stretch.

"Track, I think, helped me," Nyariki said. "Because with (closing) speed, you must have that track capability. In order to win, anyway."

In his first attempt at an official half marathon, Fagan, 24, led the pack for much of the first seven miles. But Nyariki surged into the lead with a blistering eighth mile of 4:26.

"That's what pretty much hurt everybody," Fagan said. "Because we were coming downhill that stage and he caught everyone off-guard, including myself. So I tried to hang on. And it just opened that gap."

The rest of the race effectively became a two-man contest between Nyariki and Ndereba.

In the women's race, Kiplagat, 28, pushed ahead after a trying first-half battle against the field.

"I felt confident after the seventh mile," Kiplagat said. "After the rolling hills, there was flats all the way."

Throughout the dark and gusty morning in Boston's Back Bay, competitors fought wind elements and light rain.

But the wind "wasn't enough to really make me think about it," said Newberry, the first American woman to finish.

Nate Jenkins of Lowell, Mass. was the first American man to finish, at 1:06:16.25.

Tony Nogueira of Glen Ridge, N.J. won the men's wheelchair race with a time of 54:19, holding off 2006 winner Mark Ledo. Jacqui Kapinowski of Pt. Pleasant, N.J., won the women's wheelchair at 1:22:17.

A total of $30,000 in prize money was awarded, with winners taking home $5,000. A record 4,917 participants entered the race, which follows Boston's Emerald Necklace.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

Making the Most of Search

I'd like to share with you an example of a pretty good search. This brings together a few elements we list for you in the AP Exchange Cheat Sheet. In this search, we wanted to find news about the newspaper industry. We included a media industry search (indcode=5500) and a number of keywords to help. Here's how it looks. Hopefully, it might give you some aideas on how to build similar, comprehensive searches in Exchange. We went to Advanced Search > More Options in Exchange and typed this search in, then we saved it:

(indcode=5500 and newspaper) or (journalist and newspaper) or (obit and newspaper) or gannett or mcclatchy or gatehouse or scripps or hearst or (cox and newspaper) or "lee enterprises" or "media general" or scripps or "clarity media" or schurz or belo or CHNI or medianews or "journalism" or (newspapers and legal) or (magazine and journalist) or "freedom of information" or (correspondent and newspaper) or (Tribune and newspaper)

Latest Help Guides for AP Exchange

Download saved_search.pdf Download essential_ap.pdf A few newcomers to AP Exchange have said, "If the system is so easy, why do you need guides?" Well, most folks can get up and running without the guides, but there are folks who prefer to have some resources to follow when dealing with new software and learning how to become really skilled at setting up powerful searches. Besides, imagine if we didn't produce training material!

So, here are the latest batch. We have Cheat Sheet to help build powerful searches. We have a quick start guide to help with customizing AP Exchange. There's a doc on searching, saving a search and one explaining the Essential AP section of AP Exchange.

My favorite - the Cheat Sheet, hands down. It gives you the info you need to build very niche searches that help find content you may not be aware of and can also save you tons of time.Download quick_start.pdf Download ap_exchange_cheatsheet.pdf Download Search.pdf

AP's Special Parent Content Now Available

Type SPE into AP Exchange and you'll see the latest series of Special Edition features. This batch focuses on Parenting. There are stories dealing with everything from tantrums to playgroups to others, inlcuding my favorite, how to effectively deal with someone else's misbehaving kids. There's even dieting content. Great for a print or online section. Again, to access this special content, type SPE into AP Exchange.

Halloween Features in AP Exchange

Looking for some Halloween content in AP Exchange. Here's a couple searches you may want to try. Type these terms into the search engine. You may also want to save these searches to you can check in daily to see what other features have been filed.

Type: fea halloween, halloween, halloween recipes, "trick or treat" (use quotes on this one)

How to Build a City Wire

AP offers state wires, national wires and international wires...how about a city wire? This is possible in AP Exchange. Here's how you can set this up with a Saved Search. Just type in the following search string and populate it with whatever city you need:

city=X or dateline=X or X 

Here's how this would look for Miami:  city=miami or dateline=miami or miami

You'll get news and photos from and about Miami in this search. It's a great way to track local news in AP Exchange.