Why PRX?
Shannon Whitley
I am a lazy man. I want to write a press release one time and then
have the flexibility to distribute that release through any service I
choose, automatically. I don't want to have to reformat the release if
I choose to use multiple distribution services. I want to be able to
distribute my release through RSS, and I want to take advantage of the
latest social media services to promote my release. These were my
requirements when I considered some of the gaps in the traditional
press release creation process.
I concluded that most of my issues could be solved through a standard
XML document format for press releases. I searched around for existing
XML press release formats. It was a difficult search. NewsML appeared
to be too complex for my needs, XPRL seemed to be in a dormant period,
and hRelease didn't exist yet. When I first saw SHIFT Communications'
Social Media Press Release Template in May 2006, I thought, "This is
the perfect template for an XML document that would help satisfy my
requirements." So I started my own spec, based on the SMPR template.
The development of PRX was patterned after RSS. The goal was to keep
things as simple as possible. That's what I love about RSS -- you can
describe the entire spec in a few paragraphs.
So these are my goals with PRX:
1) Keep it simple.
2) Make it flexible
3) Follow existing standards when those standards don't conflict with
#1 and #2.
PRX (http://purl.org/prx/1.0/) is a fully-functional XML format. It is
being used today in PRX Builder (http://www.prxbuilder.com) and is
under review for support in several distribution services.
But PRX isn't finished. There is still a lot of work to do. There are
new elements to be introduced and new formats to consider. I plan to
review support for hRelease and XPRL as part of the overall PRX
strategy. And there will always be more opportunities to introduce the
PRX specification to additional distribution services.
PRX is an open standard, made freely available to the community. This
group was created to guide the evolution of the PRX standard and
determine the best way to promote it as a "write-once" approach to
press release creation.