At one minute past midnight, YouTube announced a new tool for news organizations: YouTube Direct. With this tool, Google makes it clear that it wants to nurture individual “acts of journalism” (Shirky). And in the spirit of motivated self-interest, should news organizations adopt the tool, the quality level of Google’s YouTube content can only go up.
Built from our APIs, this open source application lets media organizations enable customized versions of YouTube’s upload platform on their own websites. Users can upload videos directly into this application, which also enables the hosting organization to easily review video submissions and select the best ones to broadcast on-air and on their websites. As always, these videos also live on YouTube, so users can reach their own audience while also getting broader exposure and editorial validation for the videos they create.
Advantages for organizations (not limited to news media, although focused on them):
- Ad revenue split
- Link back to primary article from YouTube clip page
- Organizations can easily review before publish (web-based administration)
Advantages for citizen journalists
- Piggy-back on readership of local news web site
- Potential for revenue sharing, should a news organization regularly incorporate your content. Negotiate.
- Implicit legitimacy virtue of hosted by trusted site
What’s not clear: exclusivity. In other words, if news organizations insist on exclusives, they are less likely to find local citizens willing to play along. For example, in Seattle there are multiple mainstream news sites as well as many hyperlocal blogs. If I upload a video to the Seattle Times, for example, are they going to demand that I not upload it to the Seattle P-I? What about a posting to my personal YouTube channel?
Which non-news organizations will be the first to experiment with this empowering tool? Which candidate for office? Which incumbent politician?
News organizations piloting the tool: ABC News, the Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston.
NPR, for instance, is soliciting user videos that run from 30 seconds to 3 minutes in length for its crowdsourced WonderScope science series. To participate, users can submit videos directly through NPR’s web site, and those that make the cut will be added to the official NPR YouTube channel.
Meanwhile, Politico is asking its readers to submit clips (2 minutes or less) for Project Politico, a program that encourages debate based on a new question each day. And the San Francisco Chronicle is using YouTube Direct to solicit videos of street performers throughout the city
CNN has probably lost any first-mover advantage that its iReport technology might have given it.
P.S. Would “mainstream media” please stop putting quotation marks around “citizen journalism”?
Reaction (added throughout the day):
- Citizen Journalists Shouldn’t Care – PC World
- YouTube Direct service to link citizen reporters and news organisations - London Guardian
- YouTube Direct to Link Media Companies and Consumers’ Video – NYT
- YouTube Gives More News Reporting Power To The People – TechNewsWorld (quotes from Kathy and Hanson)
- YouTube to connect ‘citizen journalists’ with media outlets – AFP
- YouTube Lets Anyone Create Their Own iReport - Mashable
- YouTube to Journos, Use Citizen Contributions – Information Week
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Matthew Stringer
You know, I started watching the video… and they lost me at “take advantage of citizen reporting to enhance your own services”. Seriously? Was there no other way to phrase “you’re business is losing to the crowd, so why not find a few suckers to exploit on the way down”.
I love YouTube, and I want them to make money, but this mentality just stinks to high heaven. Citizen journalists would be the ones taking advantage of whatever reach these organizations still have, not the other way around.
Nov 17th, 2009
hrhmedia
I wasn’t particularly excited about this development.
On one hand, it provides a recognizable and easy tool for citizen journalists to participate in mainstream media’s function, and that’s a good thing. I’m sure many smartphone users will take advantage of this new functionality to participate in our evolving news “ecosystem.”
On the other, it’s the ongoing colonization of the user-generated space by large companies and brand names, seeking to take back the territory they ceded to users, freelancers, hobbyists, enthusiasts. I wouldn’t worry about libel, slander, etc. — this tool apparently gives news organizations the control over vetting, approving any content that appears on their site through YouTube Direct. It also takes advantage of users who want to see their content “in lights” — but says precious little about compensation.
Frankly, if I have superlative video of a major breaking news event, depending on my world view (the greater good vs. my personal good) I would either (a) Post it to my own blog and share it with the world; or (b) Quickly hire an agent and sell it to the highest bidder (which is what a news organization would do if it owned the footage itself). Personally, I don’t think much of CNN’s iReport — it’s watered down crowdsourcing, hidden in a dark corner of the site. I pay little attention to it, do you?
Bottom line: this is a golden age for journalism, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be through the old brand names doing their best to hang onto control of content and eyeballs.
Nov 17th, 2009
Kathy Gill
Hanson, I don’t think this is designed for “major breaking news” but instead for more pedestrian stories and video commentary. Moreover, I’d argue people with a track record of reporting on school board meetings or other local happenings would have more credibility should a “major breaking news” story fall into their laps.
I find it interesting that both of you think of this as “exploitive” (Matthew’s adjective, Hanson’s narrative). I haven’t read the “contracts” at NPR or any of the other participating venues — but unless they are demanding exclusivity without compensation, I don’t see this as exploitive. I see it as _one more venue_ of distribution … one with, generally, much larger daily pageviews than the average blog.
And if news organizations are demanding exclusives without compensation, I doubt they’ll get very far.
Finally, the tool is available to non-traditional media (HuffPost is one beta tester) like the West Seattle Blog as well as organizations like Real Change or a public school. It’s not exclusively a journalism tool; it’s a “make it easy to solicit and publish videos” tool.
Nov 18th, 2009
Justin
Looking at it from Google’s perspective, YT Direct is a brilliant way of getting outsourced quality control mechanisms for this portion of their content. While the risks and issues are readily apparent, YT Direct opens up the monetization channels that have been eluding Google since they purchased YT. Now, for better or worse, they can safely put ads within professionally filtered content, alleviating advertiser’s fears of being associated with potentially inappropriate or offensive material. They get all of this without having to invest in their own editorial staff. While this may or may be positive for the independent journalist, it is a wise, low-risk, high-reward economic proposition for Google.
Nov 22nd, 2009
Elise Chisholm
To me, this concept seems like a win-win(-win) for YouTube, news organizations and citizen journalists. As Hanson and Kathy touched on, YT Direct is probably not the way to go if you’re in possession of rare, important footage and are hoping to pitch exclusivity for a hefty profit. But I definitely think it could support local human interest stories. In a challenging economy, it’s certainly an innovative way for struggling media to cut costs by taking advantage of plentiful UGC, and for talented (though potentially unemployed) content creators to make some cash while gaining visibility. Time will tell whether enough money is changing hands to make this model survive.
While writing this comment I was reminded of former client Getty Images’ decision to acquire Scoopt, a Scotland-based citizen photojournalism site, in 2007. Disappointed to see the site was shut down earlier this year: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/feb/04/citizenmedia-photography.
Dec 7th, 2009
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