Why Is It So Easy for Internet Stars to Sell Out?

Take a moment and think about who you follow online. Whether they’re popular YouTubers, Twitter powerhouses or prolific bloggers, they all have a unique success story. More importantly, many of them are now drawing comfortable salaries for doing simple things like posting videos or writing online articles.

But where do we draw the line when it comes to the success of Internet personalities? How comfortable is the general public with the idea that a person can film daily vlogs on their iPhone and make more money than your average mid-level office worker? And when our favourite Internet stars start making the jump to a “traditional” medium like TV, do we see them as “selling out”?

Budget Cuts at the CBC and Getting a Job in Journalism

I love writing this blog. It’s an outlet for me to share what I think about movies, TV and Internet, topics that are eternally fascinating to me. At the same time, I’m working on my Master of Journalism degree, improving my writing abilities and my analytical skills. But as of this moment, I have no idea whether there’s a job waiting for me when I graduate. After the federal budget that was handed down this week, my future is even less certain.

Why? Because this year’s budget has put our venerable public broadcaster, the CBC, on the chopping block for a total $115 million in cuts. I’m not saying that all Canadian journalism students are earmarked for careers at the CBC, but the cuts should serve as a wake-up call to all working and up-and-coming journalists in Canada. Sooner or later, our “safety net” will be gone, and we’ll all be on the high wire trying to stay alive.

Is ‘SourceFed’ The Future of News?

Some of you may know that I’m a long-time follower of Philip DeFranco, one of the biggest content producers on YouTube. His Philip DeFranco Show has more than 2 million subscribers and the news-based videos he posts attract millions of hits every week.

Back in January, DeFranco launched a brand-new channel to spin off from his popular news-and-entertainment show. DeFranco called the channel SourceFed, and hired a crew of new hosts to head up a daily series of short videos about popular topics on the web and elsewhere. Six weeks after its launch, SourceFed has collected more than 300,000 subscribers, and judging from its rising popularity, it’s already setting the example for how news is shared online.

The Creative Magic of hitRECord

I recently stumbled upon a cool online community. No, it’s not the latest social networking fad (thankfully), but an online gathering driven by pure creativity. It’s called hitRECord, and it’s actually been around since 2010. HitRECord is a site (and indie production company) where users submit all manner of artistic endeavours (videos, music, illustrations, stories, etc.) and work together to combine them into collaborative artworks.

Led by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who goes by the online handle RegularJOE), hitRECord strikes me as a perfect example of the raw creative power of the Internet. So far, hitRECord has made a presence for itself at film festivals, in self-published books and, of course, online.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

After 100 Posts, What I’ve Learned By Being a Blogger

This post marks my 100^th article on Professionally Incoherent. Normally, I’m not one to trumpet my online numerical “conquests” – number of tweets, tally of Facebook friends, etc. But the fact that I’ve written a hundred posts on this site over the past eight months seems like a good jumping-off point for an article on what I’ve learned about blogging so far.

I’ve found that being a journalist in 2011 and beyond will increasingly require the kinds of skills developed by running a blog, like writing an independent publication or interacting directly with readers. In a changing industry, it’s those kinds of skills that keep journalists employed.

EpicMealTime, FPSRussia and the Secret to Mass Appeal on YouTube

How do you get famous on YouTube? It’s a question that many new YouTube users have asked themselves at some point. How do you make videos that inspire million-strong audiences to return to your channel on a regular basis?

Experienced YouTube viewers probably recognize the two usernames in the headline. EpicMealTime and FPSRussia have both built large online audiences and pull in millions of hits every week. To do this, the two channels have unknowingly tapped into a sure-fire formula for online success. They each take a simple, hedonistic pleasure (food and guns, respectively) and package it up for viewers to enjoy.

How Facebook is Turning Us All Into Bloggers

When Facebook introduced some of its new features a week or so ago, there was general complaining all around. People hated the Ticker and the blue tags on “most interesting” posts. But that wasn’t the end of the changes. Some of you know that yet another feature is coming down the pipe: a completely redesigned profile, called Timeline.

It gives you two columns of Wall posts and a big, beautiful cover image behind your profile pic. This look says a lot about a strategy Facebook is adopting: to turn every user’s profile into a unique, Facebook-sanctioned blog. With a collection of 800 million “bloggers”, Facebook is steadily building itself into an insulated version of the Internet, rich with personal info to apply to advertising.