Providing the news organizations with a new means to solicit, review and rebroadcast videos on their own Web sites, YouTube will Tuesday launch its free "YouTube Direct" tool, especially designed for media-sources interested in obtaining amateur videos of momentous events, including political campaigns, protests and natural calamities.

YouTube, the most popular Internet video site, has already become a key outlet for so-called "citizen journalists" - visual or written reports submitted by amateurs - who capture noteworthy events on their cameras and upload them to the Google subsidiary.

With the unveiling of the new tool, traditional television and online news agencies will be able to create an additional platform for citizen journalism.

In the opinion of Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics, the open-source "YouTube Direct" application will enable media companies to tap into the growing community of citizen journalists who mostly upload new content on a day-to-day basis.

It will be via an application programming interface (API) that the new app will allow media organizations to pull to their respective sites a 'custom version' of the content uploaded on YouTube.

Noting that YouTube content partners can also monetize their videos by running ads, Grove added: "Users who become popular and well-known by creating good content for news organizations can join the partner program. We can help them make money by running ads against the videos."