In autumn 1999 the IPTC embarked upon an ambitious new project to develop an XML based standard called NewsML. NewsML is an XML encoding for news which is intended to be used for the creation, transfer and delivery of news. NewsML is media independent, and allows equally for the representation of the evening TV news and a simple textual story. The need for this new standard was driven by IPTC members who had decided to adopt XML as a core technology for their future business needs. The requirements developed for NewsML converged with the emerging XML family of standards. The project was heavily time constrained and required decisions to be made on how far adopt standards that were not finalized. It also needed compromises to be reached between organizations with different business priorities as well as pragmatic decisions on the availability and usability of XML tools. This presentation explains the processes adopted to achieve a successful conclusion, explains some of the problems encountered along the way and reveals how successful the project has been to date.