San Francisco — With disruptive protests violently spreading in Iran after a controversial election followed by the unexpected demise of pop star Michael Jackson, journalists from all walks of life have had a lot to cover over the past couple weeks. Seemingly in response to this coverage, YouTube and Google News have commenced a project that makes it easier for news publishers to share their video content and gain bigger audiences for it.
YouTube on Monday launched a training hub called the YouTube Reporters’ Center, intended to instruct amateur journalists on the finer points of good journalism from some of the renowned personality in the industry including Bob Woodward of Watergate fame. The two sites are now inviting “professional news outlets” that are already included in Google News to become official YouTube partners.
The YouTube Reporters’ Center, offers a series of short video tutorials covering subjects such as investigative journalism, citizen journalism, journalism ethics and how to conduct an interview.
According to the blog post announcing the launch, almost every characteristic of reporting seems to be covered: “Learn how to prepare for an interview from CBS News anchorwoman Katie Couric; how to be an investigative reporter from the legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, or why it is important for citizens to participate in the news-gathering process from Arianna Huffington, in addition to tips from Facebook’s marketing boss, Randi Zuckerberg on how to distribute content across the social network.”
Google says that you will also be able to: “learn practical and ethical tips, like how to fact check your stories, avoid breaking the law while reporting, and adhere to journalistic principles”.
An example of the kind of instruction available at the YouTube Reporters’ Center:
Also included is a video from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on staying safe in a crisis, something that might have been especially useful to journalists in a country like Iran “without getting shot” wihle recording events against the governments expressed demands.
Other tutorials include “How to Capture Breaking News on Your Cell Phone” and “How to Build Your Audience on YouTube.”
The introduction of this new tool, coupled with responses to large news stories of the last month, only provides more evidence for the increasing power of social media networks in the arena of politics.
News publishers who join the YouTube Partner Program are awarded premium placement on the YouTube News page, where news videos that are related to top stories on Google News are featured. If a publisher chooses to make their videos embeddable, they can also appear on Google News, which as Google points out, means added exposure.
The YouTube Reporters’ Center:
Now that YouTube, and more recently Twitter, has transformed the face of news reporting — with many TV channels now routinely showing videos from the service — this looks to us to be a most timely resource for aspiring citizen journalists.
With the above announcements, it seems like YouTube is ready to really begins taking news seriously.
YouTube described the venture as a bid to help “citizen reporters” learn more about how to report the news.