Google’s YouTube is making another pitch to media organizations, this time with a tool that makes it easy for news sites to solicit videos from their visitors. YouTube Direct lets visitors to a news site upload YouTube videos right from that site; news orgs can then vet the clips, which appear both on their site and on YouTube. So far, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) says ABC News, the Huff Post, NPR, Politico, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post have all signed up.

In a blog post announcing the initiative, YouTube’s Steve Grove writes that “media organizations have been looking for a good way to connect directly with citizen reporters on our site so they can broadcast this footage and bring it to a larger audience”—and that that desire led to the tool.

But YouTube Direct also comes as YouTube is trying to up the quality of videos on its site. Presumably, since news organizations will accept or reject the uploaded videos before they give them their official badge of approval, it could lead to an influx of more premium content on the site. YouTube has also tried to get content from news websites by inviting them this summer to become “news partners”—which have their videos featured on YouTube’s news channel and also can share in the ad revenue generated by their clips.

• Updated: Google Wants Newspapers To Post Their Videos To YouTube
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