Al Jazeera’s new online video venture AJ+ is not set to launch till next year, but the team behind it just published a few videos on YouTube (S GOOG) that show how AJ+ will try to distinguish itself from other news publishers online.
The preview comes after Al Jazeera officially announced in October that it was going to launch an online-only news service, and the team behind AJ+ gave me a first look at their San Francisco-based office last month. At the time, AJ+ executives told me that they’re shooting for a soft launch early next year.
This week, AJ+ published a few videos on an “AJ+ Lab” YouTube channel, including this one:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI8R9B_caDY]
AJ+ clearly is taking some cues from the production style of popular YouTube channels, and Al Jazeera Media Network’s Executive Director of Strategy, Development and Technology Yaser Bishr told me back in November that the goal was to make videos appeal to an online audience, not reproduce traditional TV news efforts. “You don’t want to inherit the legacy of the TV,” he said.
