Your local news...on YouTube

First it happened to your local newspaper when bloggers began taking over the traditional roles of reporters and editors. Now your local news station may also going the way of the digital dinosaur. The New York Times reported today that YouTube is branching out from its usual fare of laughing babies and random people getting tazed to offer “News Near You":

"YouTube, which already boasts of being 'the biggest news platform in the world,' has created a News Near You feature that senses a user’s location and serves up a list of relevant videos. In time, it could essentially engineer a local newscast on the fly. It is already distributing hometown video from dozens of sources, and it wants to add thousands more." Read more here.

Will this mean no more local nightly news programs or author-friendly morning shows? Probably not. But it does mean that even more everyday folks (in other words, broadcasters without broadcasting licenses) may become a significant and viable form of local media like never before.