The gorilla wades in

YouTube is launching Citizen News (from RWW)

The CitizenNews channel is where we’ll be highlighting some of the best news content on YouTube. If you see examples of great journalism and reporting being done by your fellow YouTubers, let me know!

So that’s that, then. Well, maybe. Until now, anybody with a newsworthy video could send it to the BBC, CNN, Reuters and a host of other destinations. But many preferred YouTube because that’s where the most eyeballs tend to be. And of course videos get picked up and embedded all over the web, which spreads the news even further – something that’s generall not possible with mainstream media outlets, because content lock-in is SACRED.
With YouTube offering a dedicated home for amateur news video, it could be game over for much of the competition – certainly unfocussed startups like CitizeNews.
However… success or otherwise will depend on the execution. Will YouTube invest sufficient resources to make sense of a mass flow of video content, where ‘sense’ includes value for viewers as well as contributors? In other words, will YouTube filter (with or without community power) and build an alternative, or parallel, news portal? It’s going to be interesting to watch.