With its ability to collect articles and sell advertisements against them, Google has already become a huge force in the news business  and the scourge of many newspapers. Now its subsidiary YouTube wants to do the same thing to local television.

YouTube, which already boasts of being “the biggest news platform in the world,” has created a News Near You feature that senses a user’s location and serves up a list of relevant videos. In time, it could essentially engineer a local newscast on the fly. It is already distributing hometown video from dozens of sources, and it wants to add thousands more.

YouTube says it is helping TV stations and its other partners by creating a new  but so far not fiscally significant  source of revenue.

But news media companies may have reasons to be wary. Few TV stations have figured out how replicate profits on the Internet. YouTube can easily act as another competitor.