Newspapers across the country are ramping up their online video operations, purchasing equipment, training reporters, heavily promoting the results, and ultimately drawing new visitors and advertisers to the newspaper's Web site.

But when you say the phrase "online video," many typical Web surfers think of YouTube first. According to comScore, Google Videos hosted more than 5 billion video streams in July 2008, the most recent month for which statistics are available; 98 percent of those streams were on YouTube.

Newspapers are torn. On one hand, newspaper editors want to bring viewers on to the newspaper's Web site to increase video traffic and ad revenue. On the other hand, newspapers need to build their brand and reach out to potential viewers who are elsewhere on the Web.

"It's both a curse and a blessing" for newspapers, says Chet Rhodes, assistant managing editor, news video for washingtonpost.com. YouTube is a curse in that it can be a competitor to newspaper's video efforts. "But the good side of it is that they've made video workable on the Web."

The number of newspapers with YouTube channels numbers is in the hundreds, according to this interactive map from the blog 10,000 Words by Entertainment Weekly Web producer Mark S. Luckie. Luckie was an online producer for The Los Angeles Times and the Contra Costa Times. But there are just as many who don't have YouTube channels.

Options
Newspapers that do choose to post their videos on YouTube have a number of options. Many newspapers that posted videos on YouTube when the site went mainstream in 2006 started with simple channels (user pages). Those pages could feature select videos or serve as an archive, as it did for the Ventura County Star's Studio805 (see this 2007 Snapshot from the Edge for more).

In 2007, YouTube launched its Partners Program. People or companies who join the partners program can let YouTube sell ads on their videos and split the revenue. A confidentiality agreement prevents YouTube partners from disclosing any financial information about the program. The Partners Program also has other benefits, including more detail analytics and wider video promotion and distribution on YouTube. Several newspapers are participating.

The Knoxville News Sentinel, which became a YouTube partner over the summer but had a channel in 2006, is not expecting to earn much revenue through the program. "If we make some money out of it, that would be great, but we're still trying to figure out the best way to monetize the video that's on our own site," says Jack Lail, director of news innovation at the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Washingtonpost.com, also a YouTube partner, hasn't turned on the advertising functionality yet, but Rhodes says the organization is not expecting it to be a significant business.

The washingtonpost.com channel is a "work in progress," Rhodes says. The newspaper is working on an automation system that will simultaneously post select videos to washingtonpost.com and the washingtonpost.com YouTube channel. "I would say we're going to be putting up a lot more of our original video – and a lot faster, as well." The newspaper recently hired a person to oversee the newspaper's off-site social networking strategy.

Still, Rhodes does not expect YouTube to be a big traffic driver to washingtonpost.com, even if a number of video viewers click on the related article link on YouTube to read a washingtonpost.com story.

The News Sentinel does not have any written criteria for what to put on its YouTube channel, but "if it's a video that would appear to have some relevance beyond our local market, then it's probably worth putting up." Lail notes that if one were to compare the top 10 Knoxnews videos on YouTube and those on the newspaper's Web site, they would not match up at all – the audiences are very different.

The News Sentinel has more than 300 videos on YouTube, including news, sports and entertainment. "We don't put all of our videos up there," Lail says. "We pick and choose which ones we want to do."

Benefit
Having the YouTube channel did come in quite handy for the News Sentinel in October. A story about a 73-year-old man who made the Roane State University basketball team did not get much notice on Knoxnews.com, until it moved on the Scripps Howard Newswire. Fox Sports, MSN and other major, national Web sites linked to Knoxnews.com and the video went viral. (See it here.)

"It just about killed our Web site," Lail says. A lot of the newspaper's online contingency plans are built around article content, so its servers can handle a crush of traffic that may come from Digg.com or The Drudge Report. This was the first time a video drew enough interest to cause problems. "And it wasn't the traffic," Lail explains. "It was just the load on that particular video server."

The newspaper contacted some Web sites and requested that they link to the YouTube version, but what really solved the problem was being able to play the YouTube video through the Scripps video player on Knoxnews.com. That eased the load on Knoxnews.com's video servers.

Pitfalls
"I think the YouTube strategy is going to be unique to each paper, because it just depends on that paper's branding strategy," Rhodes says. "I'm not a big believer in one size fits all."

"We do think it's a pretty good branding opportunity for us," Lail says. "This is just another way of reaching people who may not be reading the newspaper and might not normally use our Web site."

But Rhodes cautioned that newspapers need to put up enough content on their YouTube outlet and keep it updated so the channel does not "diminish" the newspaper's brand.

10,000 Words blogger Luckie offered other cautions and advice:

• Do customize the look of your YouTube channel.
• Do treat your YouTube channel as an extension of the newspaper's own Web site.
• Do not leave the description area blank – and fill it with keywords for search engine optimization purposes.
• Do use a custom thumbnail.
• Do include "bumpers" (a second or two showing your newspaper's logo and Web site before and after each video for branding purposes).
• Do not let newspaper videographers be "renegades." Keep all newspaper videos on the newspaper's channel.
• Do not use a nickname as a username. Instead, use your newspaper's name.

See more advice here.