YouTube to Help Sites Gather News Clips

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From THE NEW YORK TIMES
YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers.

The new feature, to be formally introduced on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners.

“We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics.

With the tool, YouTube, a unit of Google, seeks to further portray itself as an ally of media companies and other news gatherers. YouTube Direct could also bolster the Web site’s status as a source for citizen journalism video. The site has offered newsworthy clips during political crises, as in Iran’s disputed election this year, and after other breaking news events.

The tool could become a challenger to existing citizen journalism sites like iReport on CNN, where eyewitnesses can upload video of news events as well as their own opinions.

When users go to the Web sites of Politico or The Chronicle, for instance, they will be able to upload to YouTube and flag their video for review by the publication’s editors, who will have the ability to approve or reject the submissions.

Grove said that YouTube Direct would allow “news organizations to control their experience with users while tapping into the community where that activity is taking place, which is YouTube.”

NPR said it would solicit YouTube videos for WonderScope, a new, occasional scientific series on NPR.org that will invite users to “bring the abstract to life.” Time — as in, “how do you measure time?” and “how does time fly?” — will be the first subject for the series.

YouTube also envisions uses beyond the day’s news. The site suggested in a blog post that businesses could use the tool to solicit endorsements and that politicians could “ask for user-generated political commercials.”

YouTube said two television stations in Boston had also signed up as partners.

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