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News from the Future of Public Media
Writers’ Strike Roundup: We’re not all on the same (web) page
email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Dec 8, 2007 at 6:21 PM
“They’re dancin’ on your f**king grave and they keep the resids.”
It’s one of the cleaner refrains from Tenancious D’s “Rockin’ the WGA!” video—the latest in a string of short YouTube clips posted by the Writers Guild of America. The much-publicized standoff between striking radio, television and film writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has thrown the dynamics of our shifting media landscape into high relief, revealing how debates about public issues are now conducted across multiple digital, print and broadcast channels.
Denied their usual mainstream platforms for more than a month now, striking writers and their allies have been producing gigabytes of unpaid online content to make the case that they should, well, be paid for producing online content. Not into the faux-metal stylings of Jack Black? Fans of folk, country, and hiphop have their own videos to choose from; late-night comedy writers are keeping themselves busy pointing out the hypocrisy of media owners; and more educational shorts demystify the ins and outs of resids. Both corporate and independent platforms are in play in this struggle. United Hollywood, a high-quality group blog by strike captains, writers and others, is hosted on the Google-owned Blogger site. Others have chosen the left-leaning Huffington Post as the place to record their thoughts on the struggle, and Deadline Hollywood Daily—a blog owned by Nikki Finke, a columnist for alternative newspaper L.A. Weekly—has become a definitive source for mainstream reporters and strikers alike.
According to the New York Times, “For many of her readers, Ms. Finke’s Web site has supplanted traditional media as a primary source of strike news. Before the strike, Ms. Finke said Deadline Hollywood Daily averaged 350,000 page views a day. Since the beginning of the strike, she said the daily average had soared to about a million. …Ms. Finke said the size of the audience began to sink in when Bill Wrubel, a writer for the ABC series ‘Ugly Betty,’ started a chant on the picket lines ….’Variety and The Reporter stink. We get our news from Nikki Finke.’ ”
Initially framed as a power play by privileged entertainment elites, the strike has emerged as a multifaceted public issue, shedding new light on questions about the strength of organized labor, the impact of media consolidation on our national discourse, and the fate of both old and new media content creators in the digital era. Democratic presidential candidates have cancelled a debate scheduled for December 10, refusing to cross the WGA picket line. Late-night hosts are being judged on their willingness to pay staff members thrown out of work by the shutdown. And fans are fighting back, writing studio heads in support of their favorite shows, replacing their MySpace profile photos with strike support graphics, and planning online pickets of studio-sponsored Facebook profiles.
Media observers warn that the strike may result in unforseen consequences for both the writers and the larger industry. Downloads are up for podcasts, cell-phone broadcasts and online video sites, reports the Christian Science Monitor, suggesting that once audiences turn their attention away from mainstream entertainment, they may not turn back. This offers an unprecedented opening for both the creators of mission-driven media and critics who complain that media consumption has eclipsed other crucial social pursuits. As Hollywood producer Ben Haaz notes in the San Francisco Chronicle “If the strike continues, more artists and viewers will engage in a contemporary form of civil disobedience: tuning out, or tuning in to something else.”
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