AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Time to rewrite their future - LA Times

Why don’t striking writers create original online programming that could bolster their cause and show the medium’s true potential?

LAST week in a CBS Studios picket line, one TV writer referred to the current WGA work stoppage as “the first Internet strike.” And there may be something to that.

Certainly you’d want to clarify that, first of all, even in the last few years of the Internet era, there have been plenty of labor strikes across the country — to say nothing of the world. Thousands of UAW workers are striking right now against truck-maker Navistar. New York cabbies have called two strikes since September. Even employees at a dairy plant in Dawson, Minn., walked off the job a couple of weeks ago.

But this strike is the first that is not only about Internet commerce, it is also, in part, playing out on the Internet. The Writers Guild of America and its strike captains have set up online bulletins and blogs — such as the one at UnitedHollywood.com — to keep members updated. Other writer groups have tried to foster online solidarity by setting up “virtual picket lines” on Facebook and MySpace, and by producing “viral” videos of high-profile writers and actors criticizing the media companies’ position.

When Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers President Nick Counter released a statement last week comparing WGA efforts to identify strikebreakers (a.k.a. “scabs”) to 1950s-era blacklisting, the blogs instantly lit up with comments from incensed writers.