Media Pros: YouTube Can Be a Journalist

Image via CrunchBase

News Media heavyweights Katie Couric, Bob Woodward, and Nicholas Kristof are among the journalists who have lent their talents to a new YouTube venture designed to teach citizen journalists how to report the news.

YouTube, the Google-owned site on which subscribers share videos (often with disregard for copyright laws and good taste), launched youtube.com/reporterscenter this week that features online journalism training in a variety of subjects. Woodward, who combined with Washington Post cohort Carl Bernstein to become the "Woodstein" that brought down the Nixon Administration with their coverage of the Watergate scandal, presents a five-minute tutorial on investigative journalism. CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric's contribution to YouTube are pointers on conducting a good interview. Kristof, the New York Times columnist, weighs in on being a foreign correspondent.
Other participants include Ariana Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Website, who addresses citizen journalism (because talking about how to get professional journalists to write for you for no money seems tacky).

YouTube is looking for experienced journalists to upload instructional videos. With the public increasingly looking to social media and other nontraditional sources for their news, it may be a case for these celebrity journalists of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."