WebProNews

Over the weekend, YouTube made a couple news-oriented announcements. It would appear that the site is looking to become more of a resource for news content than ever before, and that means news from established publishers as well as amateurs.

Publishers Invited to Become YouTube Partners

YouTube and Google News have started an initiative to make it easier for news publishers to share their video content and gain bigger audiences for it. The two sites are now inviting "professional news outlets" that are already included in Google News to become official YouTube partners.

News publishers who join the YouTube Partner Program get featured 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.

Partners will also be able to participate in YouTube's ad revenue share program, and use the video analytics tool YouTube Insight. As WebProNews has discussed in the past, this can be a great way to see how viewers are interacting with videos.

The YouTube Reporters' Center

YouTube has launched a new resource for citizen reporters called the YouTube Reporters' Center. This is not just a place to upload news stories. It's a place where people who are aspiring to be the best reporters they can be, can go and learn some tips from the professionals.

Citizen reporters can potentially enhance their own work by following advice from people like Katie Couric, Bob Woodward, Arianna Huffington, and others from the Associated Press, NPR, and other organizations.

With the above announcements, it appears as though YouTube is ready to really start taking news seriously. When most people think about YouTube, they probably don't think about the news. They think about cats playing pianos and other viral phenomena. With YouTube clearly dominating the online video picture thus far, it makes perfect sense that it should strive to become a go-to source for news content online.