YouTube looks to be continuing its foray into the news gathering business with this latest move:

YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers.The new feature, to be formally introduced on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners.

“We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics.

With the tool, YouTube, a unit of Google, seeks to further portray itself as an ally of media companies and other news gatherers. YouTube Direct could also bolster the Web site’s status as a source for citizen journalism video. The site has offered newsworthy clips during political crises, as in Iran’s disputed election this year, and after other breaking news

Here is an example of what this will look like on Politico’s website:

Andy Plesser at Beet TV pointed out that this will likely be useful for nonprofits as well:

YouTube Direct is free and the company expects that the platform will be used by many businesses, non-profits, universities and advocacy groups.

He also got statements from some of the organizations involved in the initial rollout:

Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of the Huffington Post told Beet.TV in an email statement:

“YouTube Direct is a natural fit for Huffpost as we continue to expand the reach of HuffPost’s community and its ability to commit acts of journalism.”

Aaron Zamost, spokesperson for YouTube told us:

“This is a new application, built from our APIs, that lets news and media organizations use the power of our platform to request content directly from our users. This benefits news organizations because it gets them more content to broadcast and include in their coverage, and it’s good for users who get editorial validation and a wider audience for their videos.”

For NPR, which has had very little video on its site, this is significant move. Follows is a statement from Mark Stencel, Managing Editor, NPR Digital Media:

“While known primarily as a radio network, NPR’s role as a launch partner for “YouTube Direct” is a great fit. We’ve been experimenting with new approaches to explanatory journalism through our multimedia offerings for some time and are ready to invite our audience to take part more fully. We see strong evidence that they want to engage based on their activity on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. This audience of creative, smart and well-informed people will have a fresh take on any question or topic, and we’re eager to see and share their work.”

We will be following this as it develops. It should be interesting to see how news organizations — and nonprofits — are able to put this tool to use to better accomplish their goals.