Monday, June 23, 2008

Mainstream Media’s new correspondent: YouTube

Chris Meyer | 06/23- 10:34 PM

YouTube as the new AP Wire Service. Except nobody gets paid.

I’m still working out how I feel about this, so feel free to chime in with your own comments.

This past weekend, drag racer Scott Kalitta died in an accident while qualifying for the NHRA SuperNationals. The event was televised by ESPN.

I first learned about the tragedy while browsing the web site for the Los Angeles Times newspaper. In the initial version of the story, they didn’t have photos, but they did have a video of the accident.

It turns out that the video was an embedded clip from YouTube.

The interesting implication of this is that a news gathering source no longer needs to have staff on site, trade the story with a partner, or buy it from another news service; they can just link to a free service someone else has created.

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