Love it or hate it, there’s no doubt that “citizen journalism” — the trend where ‘regular people’ record video, snap photos, and tweet live from breaking news events — is quickly gaining steam. One of the biggest catalysts for the trend has been YouTube, which gives people an easy way to upload and share the video footage they shoot from the heat of the action. And while we’ve seen some media sites, like CNN’s iReport, attempt to take advantage of this user submitted content, many news sites haven’t found a good way to integrate it. Today, YouTube is launching a new application that looks to make this easy for all media organizations. Dubbed YouTube Direct, the new open source application will allow news orgs to integrate a video upload tool directly into their sites, where they can accept and review user uploaded footage.
The new tool will allow news organizations to screen video uploads as they come in, and use the best clips for their broadcasts and on their websites. Of course, news organizations will still be responsible for actually curating the content to ensure that it’s accurate, which is a task that will require additional manpower for the more popular news sites. All video content uploaded through these tools will be available on YouTube proper as well.
My biggest concern with this kind of reporting is always credibility — oftentimes you’ll come across videos on YouTube that seem like they’re relevant to breaking news, but are unable to determine who uploaded the clip. Fortunately, as an open source tool YouTube Direct allows organizations to customize their submission process. Hopefully the more credible ones will require (or at least encourage) uploaders to leave their contact information, so that fact checkers can follow up on their video reports to ensure their validity.
News organizations aren’t the only sites looking to accept user generated videos, either — YouTube Direct will work that any site that wants to upload video content, so we should probably expect to see some more creative uses in the future.
The feature is not live quite yet, but should be up by tomorrow morning.
Update: You can see an example implementation at 7NEWS of Boston (scroll towards the bottom of the page).
Image by quinn.anya
I’m waiting for Paul Carr to jump in on the citizen journalism..
Power to the people. My fav web marketing tool is now the video camera
awesome
Jason, do you know if YouTube Direct is only available for websites or will it also be available for iPhone, Android, etc?!
Hi Jason, is there a Wordpress or WPMU plugin for YouTube Direct in existence or under develpment? Tks for this post.
As the Mainstream Media (MSM) continues its slide to obscurity, there is no doubt that the Internet and ubiquiousness of camera cell phones and Flip video devices has taken the power of the press from the establishment and put it firmly in the hands of the everyday American citizen. This is a good thing.
We have been doing this exact thing for over 2 years now! The YouTube API allowed us to easily let our users upload their videos directly from our site. I’ll have to check this out and see if the implementation is any better.
Our example site is http://vids.loc...lwineevents.com
What I worry, is that the citizen journalists won’t be attributed or credited for their work- and large news organizations will benefit while citizen journalists get no recognition.
Whatch out news organisations, here comes the citizen journalism!
http://zweinull...erjournalismus/
Power to the people. I am wondering, where this will led to
There are a few problems with this:
1) Its just videos – no pictures
2) The process of getting mobile content in is cumbersome – lack of immediacy is a issue
3) Smaller TV stations dont have the technical know-how to work with the API and install software on their servers.
We currently work with 80+ local tv stations and provide a turn-key platform that allows the audience to easily send in images/videos of breaking news, weather and community events.
YouTube Direct is a start but its not the complete turn-key solution that local broadcasters need. As they get more feedback I’m sure new features will be added to make the system more robust.
How it can be? I dont understand the details. Its too god to be true, that youtube do so. Thanx for news.
Youtube Direct is a great tool for citizen journalism however I argue that it is not something that should be widely adopted by mainstream media (MSM). It has to many short comings for the needs of MSM. I agree with Parkers comments above.
- The lack of photos is a major issue.
- MSM need a multiplatform transcoding solution for mobile, web, and TV
- The advertising requirements are to restrictive for MSM
We are providing enterprise ready solution for MSM with a system that can take any file from any device and publish (after moderation) into an automated TV broadcast system.
Check out “The problem with Youtube Direct for mainstream media” for more information on this: http://bit.ly/ZIyVj