As more people turn to eyewitness video to keep up with breaking news events as they happen, YouTube has launched a site to help people follow this kind of content more closely. In partnership with social news agency Storyful, YouTube has launched YouTube Newswire — a curated feed of newsworthy eyewitness videos of the day, vetted by Storyful’s editorial team and embeddable from the original sources.
YouTube Newswire will contain global and regional feeds containing the most relevant videos in different parts of the world. In addition, YouTube has introduced two new resources specifically for journalists: The First Draft Coalition and The WITNESS Media Lab. The First Draft Coalition is a new site with educational resources for verification and ethics training, tools, research, and case studies around the biggest news stories of the moment.
The First Draft Coalition is said to launch this fall. The WITNESS Media Lab is a new site focused on tackling pressing human rights issues by analyzing eyewitness video. This site will contain a series of in-depth projects focusing on human rights struggles from the eyewitness perspective of real people who live, witness, and experience them.
YouTube Newswire and the WITNESS Media Lab are live as of today, with the First Draft Coalition to follow in the coming months.