The largest and most popular online video resource, YouTube has announced the launch of an all new service called, YouTube Direct. This new service will enable the users to become reporters and journalists on YouTube channels, as the media outlets will be able to rebroadcast the raw videos uploaded by the users.

The all new YouTube Direct is an open source platform, built on the foundations of YouTube’s API (Application Programming Interface) will give the news, media and other information websites to use standalone YouTube upload tools on their sites itself. Along with these features, YouTube has also made it extremely easy for news organizations to expand their information distribution services as such organizations will now be able to request YouTube for videos related to breaking news. user-generated reports and other informational content uploaded by the website’s users.

According to Steve Groves (News and Politics, YouTube),

“People around the world are taking up cameras and covering news in ways big and small — from documenting global events to filming local town halls in American neighborhoods. YouTube Direct empowers news and media organizations to easily connect with these citizen reporters and use the power of our platform to cover the news better than ever before.”

The citizen reporters will be able to directly upload their videos to YouTube Direct and the news agencies can then pick the desired videos from YouTube. However, there is no exclusivity option for the videos used by media outlets. The free for all policy of YouTube is still applicable to new service and all YouTube users will have access to the videos uploaded to YouTube Direct. Some of the news agencies who have already started taking advantage of YouTube Direct are, Huffington Post, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston.

Via Yahoo! News.