News on YouTube is taking on a streamlined look

YouTube has a place as a dedicated go-to for news clips that show the most breaking stories at pertinent times. Now, the YouTube app is changing how it presents news to make finding vital information more accessible and faster.

The new update streamlines how the YouTube app presents news coverage, whether that consists of long-form videos, podcasts, or even YouTube Shorts. All of those mediums will be accessible from one single point – a “news watch page.”

Here’s how it works. If you find a news video from the homepage or in Search, you’ll see a purple newspaper icon where the Channel icon would be. Tapping that will open up the news story page, which splits up that topic into several different areas so you can catch up the way you want. YouTube will present videos relating to that topic through live coverage, long-form content, podcasts, and Shorts.

The new layout expands the idea of a “more like this page” with a dedicated section for that specific topic. The story you choose dictates the content you’ll see, which helps you gather information from multiple sources on the same consistent topic.

To bolster this new layout, YouTube is also incentivizing authoritative news sources to utilize Shorts with financial grants and specialist support. Essentially, YouTube is making it convenient for news sources to create and upload short-form content that’s more easily digestible and can fill the bottom of the new news watch page.

This all comes as YouTube pushes a huge update to the mobile app with dozens of new features, which should be on its way out in a couple of weeks. The news update is set to be “rolling out over time for mobile users in approximately 40 countries, with desktop and living room integration to come.” While that doesn’t imply much, it’s a feature to look forward to.