As more breaking news is recorded and quickly loaded to social sites, it’s becoming increasingly important to verify that those stories are told accurately.
That’s the motivation behind YouTube Newswire, a new service Google announced in a blog post today.
“In the last 10 years, we’ve witnessed many of the biggest and most important news stories unfold on YouTube. From the Green Revolution, Arab Spring and protests in Ferguson, to the Charlie Hebdo attacks and earthquake in Nepal, user-generated video has provided a unique and visceral perspective on what’s happening in the world around us,” writes Olivia Ma, head of strategy and operations at the News Lab at Google. “It’s almost impossible to turn on the news during a breaking event without seeing raw video uploaded by a YouTube user somewhere across the globe.”
Ma writes that more than 5 million hours of news is watched on YouTube daily. As the primary source of news for many, YouTube Newswire will partner with social news agency Storyful‘s editors to curate and verify the most “newsworthy” videos. It will have global and regional feeds that newshounds can follow via Twitter or by subscribing to a daily newsletter.
Additionally, Google’s YouTube news initiatives will include a “First Draft Coalition” of journalists and experts to create educational resources for citizen journalists to tap when creating video news. That site will launch in the fall and include ethics training, tools, research and case studies. And the News Lab at Google will continue to collaborate with Witness Media Lab to produce in-depth projects that focus on eyewitness videos of human rights struggles. You can visit that site here.
Big Tech is certainly stepping up to the plate as far as generating news. Earlier this week Apple posted job listings for editors to help curate its upcoming news app.
