I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of newspaper.coms putting videos on YouTube. To me, it seems the best thing would be that more people could find and watch your video and it could possibly drive traffic back to your site. On the negative side, are there copyright issues?
I was wondering what debates people are having in their newsrooms about putting videos on YouTube.
If you put videos on YouTube, could you post your channel page here so I can take a look? Have you seen increased traffic to your own site? Since you're not getting money for them, what exactly are you getting? Basically, what value do you see in putting videos on YouTube?
UPDATE: I posted this same question on the Yahoo group, and I'm getting some good answers. I'm posting them in the comments section of this post.
Monday, April 09, 2007
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15 comments:
For most publications out there, it's going to be that oddball video that does well on YouTube. If the news organization doesn't take "ownership" of the video and put it on YouTube first, it's likely someone else will -- illegally. By the time your staff notices it, and YouTube takes it down, it's likely that the buzz around it is gone. While I'm not a fan of playing into YouTube's content-greedy hands, I think I lean toward at least garnering whatever audience you can before someone else steals those eyeballs from you.
Angela,
I saw you at the CICM Conference and really enjoyed you Video lesson.
At The Battalion, (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=battvideo)
We decided to put our videos on YouTube for several reasons:
1. It takes the strain off of our servers.
2. We don't like College Publisher's video channel (It doesn't separate our videos from AP stuff.)
3. The ability for readers to find, subscribe, and share our videos is much easier with YouTube.
With sites like TexAgs and the huge numbers of Aggie alumni scouring the internet for any type of Aggie news, I think our videos are hitting people who usually don't come to thebatt.com (for some reason, many Aggies have something against The Batt, beats me.)
Thanks for your opinions! Keep em coming, people...I need ammo to try to convince my bosses to allow us to post our videos.
At KnoxNews.com, we post videos on YouTube and it's brought added exposure. We use our branded intro/outro images and videos to protect against copyright. There's no saying anyone still can't steal a video, but it's a risk we're willing to take for extra viewers who wouldn't find us via our homepage.
Now THAT is the ammo I'm talking about! It might make my bosses' ears perk up a bit.
Lauren, could you post a link to the knoxnews YouTube channel?
Oops, nevermind, I found it!
Does anyone else have a channel? Please post!
I posted this same exact question on the Yahoo group, and I'm going to post the answers from that here as well. That way I have them all in the same spot, and others can also benefit from the debate.
This answer from Damon Kiescow of the Nashua Telegraph:
To start - we operate from the 'what does it hurt' perspective.
http://youtube.com/nashuatelegraph
I know we have readers and non-readers in our area that are using YouTube. If they do a search on "Nashua" or "NH" I would like them to feel like we at least clued-in enough to have a presence.
This answer from Thomas Davidson:
Terrific question, one several of us are noodling on over at 'troubled' Tribune. (Sorry. Read too many Sam Zell stories today; I think that phrase turned itself into a save-get on my computer.)
The pros: More people see your stuff.
The cons: There aren't any.
Well, there are some nagging 'uncertains,' but they're definitely not cons. Ideally, you want people finding your video on your site, so the business-side folks can generate some money off it and continue to pay your (and my) phony-baloney salaries*.
Truth is, tho, from limited experimentation by us (and others who share their data - ain't that nice of them?): YouTube (or some other aggregator) is almost certainly additive to whatever traffic you have on your site. So: More people are seeing it.
Trouble is, you can't directly make money off YouTube. Not yet, anyway. (Tho their corporate overlords at Yahoo are experimenting with a revenue-share program similar to the AdWords model.)
But, as it stands today, the worst that happens is more people see your stuff - and some of them might visit your site to see more.
As for copyright issues: If you produced it, there aren't any.
But if you used music, you did remember to use only stuff that's licensed and paid-for, right?
As I often say on this thread, I'm not a shooter, but.... There's something else I'm not, which is a lawyer. But you don't want to run afoul of ASCAP, BMI and other organizations for music rights-holders. Their lawyers make Great Whites look downright charming.
And, no matter what some newsroom-lawyer-wannabe tells you: THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING AS 'FAIR USE' ON MUSIC RIGHTS.
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(I'm assuming this is the Tribune's YouTube channel--please correct me if I'm wrong).
I've done a bit of research, and I found these big media companies on YouTube.
Forbes.com video network
NBC
Reuters
Foxnewsblast
BBCworldwide
CBS
The Post-Standard in Syracuse has videos online at Syracuse.com, but the staff is encouraged to post videos at YouTube. We can put the videos on our blogs then. I've started off by putting my (amateurish) video interviews with staff members on YouTube. In what might be an attempt to target the "oddball video" audience, I posted videos of our staff (including the publisher) in "Buyout: The Musical."
I'm not sure if that will comfort or scare your bosses.
http://www.youtube.com/bcubbison
I was wrong about the link for the Tribune's YouTube channel. Message from Thomas Davidson:
"Nope, that links not ours. I'd post it - but it's not live at the moment (had one. took it down for tweaks. Lawyers still arguing about business terms for them)."
Some more thoughful responses from the Yahoo group:
Thomas Davidson:
You can certainly embed the YT code on your site. You 'keep' the reader in many, but not all senses. In the business sense, you certainly control the display-ad inventory that surrounds the video player (read: the banners and tiles).
But - again, from a strictly business sense - the display-ad inventory is of modest value. The high-demand element du jour is the video advertising inventory (either the dreaded pre-roll, or the more-interesting 'interstitial' that runs in between two video segments selected by the user). If you 'use' YouTube as your video player, you don't control that video inventory.
More to the point, the advantage to YouTube is not their video-playing technology - which is fine, but can easily be replicated. It's the YouTube audience, which is massive (35 million unique visitors last month, according to comScore - which almost certainly undercstates the reach).
Elmer Ploetz:
So theoretically, you could put your video on YT and also have it embedded with your site.
You'd be losing potential ad revenue, but gaining potential for massive exposure.
Considering how difficult it can be to get management to open up the coffers for cameras and other equipment,I suspect they're going to frequently choose that route rather than invest in their own servers. The danger is that it may be short-sighted in that once you give up a potential revenue and start doing something one way, it can be hard to reverse it.
Thomas Davidson again:
You're absolutely right about how choosing one path can limit your future options (Microsoft got rich on the theory of switching costs).
That said, nothing prevents you at this stage from posting material yourself on your site (either with homegrown Flash players, or any of the third-party hosting providers like Brightcove, WorldNow, Ralph's Plumbing & Online Video, etc.) and separately posting some or all of your clips to YT.
Scott Anderson of the Journal Times:
We love you tube. Assembling a homegrown swf player and shell is time consuming for us, and our company (corporate, inhouse or otherwise) has yet to deliver a video portal. Period. In light of a lack of support by other means, we do what we can, and then get on with it. If corporate tells us differently, or if our company wants to start placing ads on the video track (which they both have not to date), so be it.
Here is our channel: http://www.youtube.com/journaltimes
A response from Mark Loundy:
Although it's cheap and easy, YouTube should be an interim solution
at best. Using third-party solutions dilutes a newspaper's most
valuable quality -- its brand. Until YouTube starts providing OEM
(read: invisible) solutions, then newspapers should look elsewhere
for their video distribution.
It's inconceivable to me, and to almost everyone else outside the newspaper industry, how anyone can spent more than a nanosecond debating the merits of putting your video on YouTube.
The only issue I can see is whether you have staff time available for it.
I'm amused by the notion that newspapers don't have money to equip their staff with digital cameras.
For starters, almost every low-end digital camera and many, many cell phones today will take pics and video that are adequate for the purpose - and far superior to having nothing to offer.
What are newspapers doing hiring or retaining staff who don't have a digital camera or workable cell phone of their own to use?
For me, there's no question that we need to syndicate our video content. There's such a huge, dispersed audience for online video, and there's no way to take advantage of it if you are only posting content on your own web site.
My question is whether YouTube, or some other video sharing service, is the way to go. I'm starting to think that Brightcove or Revver would be better, since they have compensation for content creators. YouTube compensates the big dogs like NBC, but not the little guys. Hopefully that will change soon.
Many newspapers are buying camcorders and training their staff to use them. We've got Canon Elura 100s that our reporters can check out. Some newspaper chains like Howard Owens's Gatehouse Media have gone a step forward, buying cheap point-and-shoot camera/camcorder combos to permanently issue to all reporters.
Another question newspapers must answer is who will edit all that video? Video editing has a large learning curve and it takes a lot of time. It's hard to ask reporters to find that time because they already have so many other responsibilities.
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