YouTube is launching a $1.6 million program that’ll pay news organizations to make short-form content.
The Shorts Innovation Program for News is intended to “strengthen news organizations’ short-form video capabilities through financial grants and specialist support,” Brandon Feldman, YouTube’s director of news & civics partnerships, and Geoff Samek, YouTube’s director of product management for news, said in a company blog post.
For now, YouTube’s pouring cash and support into 20 organizations across 10 countries. Those organizations, it says, were selected based on a “strong existing long-form video presence on YouTube, but looking to improve and expand their Shorts news content creation.”
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The program’s first wave of orgs include Univision, France’s AFP, and Singapore’s Mediacorp. YouTube says it will work these organizations for at least the next year.
In addition to the Shorts Innovation Program for News, YouTube’s also launching a news highlight feature that builds off previous tools like its Top News and Breaking News shelves, which are designed to highlight factual information about important events–like natural disasters, elections, and armed conflicts–from trustworthy sources.
The new feature is a more expansive hub that’ll pull long-form VODs, Shorts (presumably some from that $1.6 million program), livestreams, and podcasts about the same news topic together into one watch page.
YouTube says the goal here is to “[allow] viewers to deep dive and explore multiple sources and angles.”
“Together, these updates help underscore YouTube’s commitment to connecting viewers with credible, timely, and substantive news content as well as our dedication to supporting news publishers in experimenting with emerging video news formats,” Feldman and Samek added.
Watch pages are currently rolling out to mobile users in 40 countries, with desktop and living room TV versions slated for future release.
