Understanding the Writers Guild of America Strike

We happen to be marching into week five of the Writer’s Guild of America strike and I don’t know about you but I’ve reviewed a monster load of articles on the subject (that’s a metric measurement). And what I saw was a startling trend reportage. Journalists tended to portray the writers in the dispute as, at best, whiners and, at worst, hounds for money. I don’t get why this slant repeatedly occurs in the reports, especially as many of the articles are sourced from esteemable news outlets. Yet, despite that fact that so many of these articles tend to boil the WGA strike issues down to absolute mush, I found I came up from this mush holding onto a clear, hard truth: anyone, even screenwriters, ought to be appropriately paid for their work.

So, as a counterbalance to all those lopsided articles, I’ve gathered some links that should serve as primers on the screenwriters’ position– just in case you’re fuzzy on why Lost might not air next year or why the state of next years movies may be yuggy.

• Unitedhollywood.com, a blog started by the strike captains, has a handy four-minute video that encapsulates the writers’ position.
• Damon Lindelof, cocreator and executive producer of Lost, wrote an elegant little piece for the November 11th New York Times. The op-ed is brief and in it Lindelof not only provides a clean snapshot of the writers’ plight, but also grieves over traditional television’s death.
• A healthy part of The Office’s actors are writers for the show. So it’s both an intriguing and funny treat to see these writer-actors explain–and joke–about their point of view.
• Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, hijacks his fans’ blog, Whedonesque, to post about the issues concerning the strike over the course of the WGA strike.