Recently, Phillip DeFranco beat out The Young Turks and received Streamy Awards for not only Show of the Year, but also News Program of the Year. This is a really interesting development, considering that The Young Turks does a lot of incredible reporting and has an interesting take on broadcast news, while Phil sits in his room and talks about what's trending on Twitter. That most certainly is a gross oversimplification of what these two YouTube enterprises do (and, to be fair, I watch and enjoy both programs regularly) but it really begs the question of where the line is drawn between news and entertainment, and some of the risks of online independent media in that sort of environment.
So how did this happen? What led Phil to win both awards? Well, the Show of the Year award is entirely determined by audience input. People could go to the Streamy website and cast multiple votes every day for the program of their choice. Phil DeFranco consistently plugged the voting in every episode of his program up to the night of the award, while The Young Turks, to my knowledge, didn't mention it once, instead choosing to focus on the more important part of the program: the news. Because of this, it's no wonder Phil won the Show of the Year award because more of his audience knew about the nomination and voting process.
This logic could extend to the News Program of the Year, even though that award isn't determined by audience input. When it comes down to it, personality YouTubers by their very nature have a more vocal and engaged audience, and there's a few reasons for that. First, the audience sees the same face every day. People who watch Phil aren't watching the show for the content Phil delivers so much as Phil himself. One could argue that Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks is the same way, because like Phil, he's a very personable guy that isn't afraid to say what he believes. The difference is that The Young Turks consists of multiple people who are equally personable and bold - it's a show about open discussion about issues between various progressives. Phil's show is a very two-sided show because it is a conversation between Phil and his audience rather than everyone talking with everyone. This also ties into the second reason why personality YouTubers have a more vocal audience, which is that instead of the person being part of a brand, the person is the brand. The Phillip DeFranco Show is called that because it's named after the guy who made the show. The last name "DeFranco" is technically not his birth surname, but later on he legally changed his surname to DeFranco for various reasons. The Young Turks is not The Cenk Uygur Show, and if it was, I'd argue it'd be a worse program for it.
The future of news and news commentary will be interesting as both internet personalities and independent journalists continue to pop up. If we encounter a blog, there's no way to know whether it's more personality-driven or more news-driven unless you really dig into how the publication operates. Phil DeFranco is probably not the best place to get the news, but he is still a means of gaining new perspectives on the news. He absolutely has a place in the internet landscape, but calling him a journalist is just plain inaccurate.
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