YouTube Launches Newswire Team to Curate Eyewitness Footage of News

Google's YouTube has, for better or worse, become a significant, primary news source. The ability of a person-in-the-street to provide in-the-moment video and post it on YouTube has changed information dissemination. For TV networks, the emergence of YouTube and its Newswire project would suggest a greater migration of eyeballs to the online world.

The fly in this ointment is its rawness. How could one trust the veracity of an amateur video? It's not as if an outsider video provider had any institutional connection that would bring ballast to the "must-see" moment. Well, to solve that issue, the folks at YouTube have announced the formation of "YouTube Newswire." This team's role will be the curation of the day's hot news videos. According to a story in theverge.com, the Google group will partner with Storyful, a social news outfit whose primary mission will be to vett the video content.

As Google itself pointed out, over five million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day. Not all of them are cute doggies, charming babies, and celebrity baloney. There's hard news. However, as Google knows, trust is a big world in the social media universe. The YouTube Newswire alliance with Storyful seems a small price to pay to maintain that trust.