National Public Radio (NPR) is changing what it means to be a news organization. While traditional news organizations want to keep their content close, NPR has taken the approach of making content widely available via an API – an approach they call "brand and release." They've made 250,000 stories, going back 13 years, available through their API.
Zack Brand from NPR said that the NPR API is getting about 2 million requests per month, and there are 1,300 registrants (you have to register to get access to the API). Content is available in a variety of formats; so far, 51% of requests use XML, 20% RSS, and 23% widgets.
(Another notable new organization that has been making some content available via an API is the New York Times, which has an article search API, among others.)
Also participating in this session was Robin Sloan from Current.tv. Current made interesting use of Twitter streams as part of its presidential debate coverage. The hash tag they created for people to tag their posts, #current, was the third most popular Twitter tag during the debates, bested only by the tags for the candidates themselves.
Current built an application to provide a mash up of various data sources, including Digg, on election day. In true agile fashion, they made multiple software updates even after the show began broadcasting!