We hear YouTube is preparing a new blog, and the video-sharing site is apparently seeking one or more professional journalists to write it. Google doesn't need to wait for bloggers to take videos viral when it start the process directly.

We're aware of at least one veteran Gotham editor, with experience in both print and online news, who was a candidate for a blogging position; presumably the job is related to this listing for a "Culture and Trends Curator" in New York who can produce as work samples "several blogs, articles or pieces that they have produced:"

Part digital anthropologist, part web journalist, this person will be the type who can discover the cool indie band before they go meteoric, track a trend of user-generated political commercials around a mayoral election in Smalltown, USA, or spot a series of protest videos bubbling up in the wake of an election crisis abroad. In addition to being dedicated and culturally aware, you must be a fast, efficient worker who plays well with others and can write frequently, and on deadline. Your posts will uncover stories you can imagine news outlets pointing to as the "latest buzz on YouTube".

Once upon a time YouTube virals might have been spotted by outside sites like Videogum or TubeFilter. But given YouTube's rapid growth — it more than doubled monthly views to 12 billion as of November — Google apparently think the media need some help finding the gems. Which isn't unreasonable. The trick comes in convincing web publishers-slash-Google clients that a site that walks likes a competitor and talks like a competitor isn't, in fact, competition. Assuming Google, awash in advertising profits, even cares what those guys think.