You Report: What’s happening now in the Bay Area?

Though YouTube is a global site, it’s often local videos that are most relevant to your life. When people use camcorders and mobile phones to capture newsworthy events in their neighborhoods and upload them to YouTube, they’re broadening the window into our own communities. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area (where YouTube is based), we’ve seen several YouTube videos inform local news coverage, from the snapping of support cables on the Bay Bridge, to the shooting of Oscar Grant by an Oakland police officer, to fights breaking out on Muni, the local bus system.

Earlier this summer, we announced our CitizenTube News Feed, the first of two projects we're doing with the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Now, we’re participating in an experiment in citizen reporting right here in our own backyard. We’re joining forces with our local ABC station, ABC7 (KGO-TV), to launch the ABC7 uReport powered by YouTube. ABC7 will use YouTube Direct to collect news footage from people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Residents of the Bay Area are invited to document the news and events happening where they live, work and play, and to submit those videos via YouTube Direct to the producers at ABC7. The team at ABC7 will feature newsworthy videos on television (Channel 7 in the Bay Area), on their website (ureport.abc7news.com), and on their YouTube channel (youtube.com/abc7news).

Do you have a video camera and live in the Bay Area? You can participate in the project by submitting your news videos to ureport.abc7news.com, and be sure to follow along on Twitter (@abc7newsbayarea) and on Facebook (facebook.com/abc7news) for the latest news and updates.