Hi Jane! Thanks for keeping us up to date on this.

I’ll just add this to the list of the many, many reasons I love Joss Whedon. Thanks for this one, Jane — excellent riposte, Mr. Whedon. Just excellent…

thanks jane

Part of the problem, I think, is that so many people imagine that writing is something anyone can do, if they just sat down and tried. HA!

(a la Billy Collins’ story of meeting someone at a party who says something along the lines of “oh, you write poetry? My 11 year old daughter LOVES to write poetry.”)

I love a writer who can write “where did this paragraph go?” after ending up writing about ladies who are ZOMBIES.

lol

Thanks for sharing this report, Jane, it’s most important that we keep abreast of the subtle (and not-so) putdowns of this strike and who the strikers are. The machine’s organs are all at work convincing us.

And then the machine will win. And eat us all.

Inside the New York Times:

All the trappings of a union protest were there journalism were there . . . But . . instead of hard hats and work boots, reporting and objectivity, we are treated with propaganda and world class shilling

slainte,
cl

Jane, did you wear your arty glasses and a fancy scarf when you picketed? Did Howie? I blame Howie for this NYT report.

caoimhin laochdha @ 6

Inside the New York Times:

All the trappings of a union protest were there journalism were there . . . But . . instead of hard hats and work boots, reporting and objectivity, we are treated with propaganda and world class shilling

slainte,
cl

Perfect!

Campaign to support the writers!

It’s quick and easy!

It’s always the folks standing in the streets wanting to get back to work who are labeled lazy.

Billionaire bosses in jets or posh offices..not so much.

Isn’t the NYT still a union paper? Seems like the reporter may have forgotten that the Guild represents reporters, too. Or perhaps in these parlous times, newspapers aren’t worried about strikes, since workers may have cause to fear the business would decide to fold altogether…

Well this is on topic because it is about the NYT:

The NYT is I believe in the process of tansitioning its Iraq coverage from its familiar hacks and idiots to a fresh new crop of hacks and idiots. Whatever else you can say about Bill Keller’s war mania it is consistent. I mentioned previously the article: “As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone Shifts” by Partrick Healy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11…..5dems.html

It accepts without question that lower casualty rates mean progress is being made and that ergo Democrats have had to change their positions in light of this blazing truth. This is all about buying White House talking points whole and then regurgitating them. It overlooks Iraq’s internal political dynamics, the original goals of the surge, and all of the factors that have led to the current downturn in casualties. It is in short revisionist history.

Steven Myers continues this meme today in his article: “U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11…..LYYxFlmF7w

It begins:

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

This is a riff on the old meme that the insurgents are so desperate that violence in Iraq is likely to increase. What it is saying is that the military has done so well that the political goals will have to be cut back. Does anyone besides me think that this is dishonest and deceptive? Progress is being made except it, err well, isn’t?

Again it distresses me that these goofs have so bought into the Administration’s Iraq narrative that they have forgotten that Iraq is in civil war. That this explains why the various sides are relatively quiet now as they build up their strength and why too there has been no movement on the political front. But try telling that to the stenographers at the Times. They wouldn’t buy it in a million years because this would require them A) to think, B) stop drinking the koolaid the Administration and the military have been feeding them, and C) go against Keller’s policy of cheerleading Bush’s war.

The thing I don’t get about the NYT article is, reporters are writers, too. When they aren’t shills and dupes, that is. You’d think they would feel some solidarity with folks who write for a living…

Oh, wait.

Laura Doty @ 4

Part of the problem, I think, is that so many people imagine that writing is something anyone can do, if they just sat down and tried. HA!

(a la Billy Collins’ story of meeting someone at a party who says something along the lines of “oh, you write poetry? My 11 year old daughter LOVES to write poetry.”)

Well, when we see people like Ann Coulter, Rust Limpballs, and Bill Orally writing books, it does begin to appear that anyone can do it. Although I am always somewhat skeptical as to whom has done the actual “writing” in those folks instances.

I’m reminded of Studio 60, and how it completely failed when the potential was there for a great drama about how bastard painful it can be to write comedy.

Writing is hard. Writing on the kind of deadlines that TV demands, with consistency and quality, while meeting the demands of everyone involved in the process, is really hard. It’s a different kind of hard from working in a coalmine, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take its toll on, and deserves to be rewarded appropriately.

Been said already, but CEOs and corporate chairmen can’t talk about the billion-dollar market of online distribution and then stiff the writers.

This is about a fair wage for our work.

And other people stealing of that work. The issue of how much money writers make or don’t make is a distraction.

Didn’t anyone learn anything from Barton Fink?

Writers’ Strike Love Story
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EodzF_orJQY

I’ll bet the NYT person who wrote that story brought home more money last year than did 99% of the striking WGA writers.

You can get paid for writing?

Would now be a good time to point out that Mann Coulter is a serial plagiarist? That is, she doesn’t really write; she steals other people’s writings and passes them off as her own. Theft, basically. Traditional Rethuglofascist Fambly Value! New and Improved!

Some people are saying Zi*nists are underrepresented in the American media.

You would think that a newspaper reporter would feel a bit more connection with screenwriters.

I’m guessing that the whole “NY vs LA” thing is driving the NYT story, because screenwriters and reporters have a lot in common.

Both deal with words as their main tool of the trade.

Both deal with editors and various “higher-ups” that can squelch a story or grease the skids for it.

Both deal with “bean counters” — ad execs, producers, accountants — who can question the writer’s worth on sometimes dubious grounds.

Both must encourage the public to hunger for their words, not just feeding folks for today but making them anxious to return tomorrow.

And despite this, we get “the curious specatacle of a glamour strike” from the NYT. Go figure.

localroger @ 20

You can get paid for writing?

Not if Jeffrey Immelt can help it.

localroger @ 20

You can get paid for writing?

I’m still waiting for my check from George Soros. But I’m a patient guy.

I just posted Joss’s piece on my blog (scroll down to the update). Actually, this is the 2nd thing I found post-worthy from FDL today. The first was about GreaterGift.org.

Musicians have long known about the injustice of the Suits.

I fully support the WGA in this.

caoimhin laochdha @ 6

Inside the New York Times:

All the trappings of a union protest were there journalism were there . . . But . . instead of hard hats and work boots, reporting and objectivity, we are treated with propaganda and world class shilling

slainte,
cl

I am SO glad you’re on our side.

Wheedon is probably one of my favorite men in the known universe. This post is one of the many reasons why.

OT

but of interest to pups,
On CSPAN 1 now
just starting

Q&A
Author
Nicholas Negroponte, Founder & Chairman of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), discusses his organization & its efforts to provide one connected laptop to every school-age child in developing countries

As long as I am slamming the NYT, I should point out this article as well: “Behind Rice’s Shift on Leading Mideast Peace Efforts” by Elisabeth Bumiller:

For Condoleezza Rice, the peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in Annapolis, Md., reflect her evolution from passive participant to activist diplomat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11…..ce.html?hp

It begins:

At President Bush’s first National Security Council meeting in January 2001, he announced that he did not want to be drawn into the shattered Middle East peace process, people at the meeting recalled, because he believed that former President Bill Clinton had pushed so hard for an Israeli-Palestinian accord that he made the situation worse.

So what are Bush and Condi doing at the end of this Administration all in the name of legacies? Why the same thing Clinton tried only not as well. The Times is building up the Annapolis talks but the simple truth is that there is no there there. Like all of Rice’s efforts in the Middle East, these are at best talks about talks. In other words, the strong likelihood is that nothing concrete will come out of them. The media, however, like the NYT, being the lapdogs they are is still going through the rote motions as if something will happen, and even when it doesn’t they will likely report that some progress was made although nothing actually happened.

Bumiller is identified as writing a soon to be published biography of Rice. So we all know how objective she is likely to be. I think that in the spirit of costcutting the Times could save a lot of money by just printing White House and corporate talking points. Why continue with the expensive fiction of reporters? In these days of tight budgets, it seems an overly expensive fig leaf.

I wish workers didn’t have to get into arguments about how hard work is and the inevitable who works harder to make a case for fair returns to labor. No one argues that there ought to be a contest between a shareholder and a janitor to determine who has worked the hardest in order to decide whether company income should go into dividends or wages. Workers shouldn’t hit each other over the head with owners’ myths.

Peterr @ 25

localroger @ 20

You can get paid for writing?

I’m still waiting for my check from George Soros. But I’m a patient guy.

Yeah, what’s up with that? With all the speculation going on in markets now, it’s not like he can’t afford it.

I have to agree. I thought that writing would get easier in time. It is in a way, if you just rattle off what you did before. But when you want every piece to be something new you’ve worked out, it is hard as hell. I look back at what I’ve published, and I can’t believe I was the person who did it. It’s like I’m a completely different person when my concentration is at its peak. It’s like an addiction.

The writers deserve every cent they get and more.

I wanted to say I support the Union, 100%, in China, of course, there are no unions and they lose 4,000 coal workers per year. Unions represent us all.

Every time you’re not sipping a half-half decaf with a lime twist whilst picketing, a baby Reuther cries.

;>)

nihil obstet @ 30

I wish workers didn’t have to get into arguments about how hard work is and the inevitable who works harder to make a case for fair returns to labor. No one argues that there ought to be a contest between a shareholder and a janitor to determine who has worked the hardest in order to decide whether company income should go into dividends or wages. Workers shouldn’t hit each other over the head with owners’ myths.

The Terms and Conditions of my last day gig specified that [1] it was “employment at will” and [2] that anything I created of value while employed was a “work made for hire,” the intellectual property rights pertaining to which were owned in perpetuity by the employer. No resids.

SOP in the regular bidness world.

Which was OK, I guess, given that they paid me 80 grand a year. Writing for TV and film is different. They wanna pay the writers a relative salary pittance in return for potential downstream revenue participation. Now they want to pretty much cut the writers out of much of that, given where the downstreams are headed (e.g., online).

Sux.

I have decided that Carville and Matelin…are from outer space…

I’m watching Galaxy Quest…that must be the reason for my surmise.

;>

A week or so ago I heard an interview with the producer for one of the reality shows. The people that pull those together are not part of the WGA. They are not writers, because he explained, they are not writting they “are telling a story”. —stunned speachlessness—

Yea, Unions! Yea, fair compensation!

Fox -1000 for canceling Firefly, sigh…

Power to the workers!

Off topic but interesting:
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/

Re link above, how tasering is now used to punish for lack of obedience..

The wish for unquestioning, unresisting obedience is coming true in America, more and more each day.

May God help us all.

The studios want to pay the writers once for projects while the studio will make money from digital downloading for decades.

It ain’t complicated. Writers should get their cut as long as the studios do.

Linfalas @ 38

They are not writers, because he explained, they are not writing they “are telling a story”.

Yeah, and Spielberg doesn’t direct, he just offers advice.

;>)

What frosts me is that all those reporters belong to unions. Yep. And they get a living wage and good benefits because of that union. And yet they are reflexively anti-union. I suspect that the ones who work for the Times have some notion that it’s all about them– that the reason they have job security and benefits and a good salary is because they’re just such good damn writers, and isn’t it a shame that they have to belong to a union… when the truth is, they learned what they learned, as much as that is, and some of them don’t seem to have learned much, given the job protection of a union. Very few start at elite levels, after all, and few manage to be lucky enough to achieve that. The union made survival possible. But oh, well, let’s make fun of another set of writers who belong to a union, because … hmm. The logic breaks down, but logic is not what anti-union reporting is about.

Truth is, just a few years ago, it was the free-lancers who forced the Times to recognize their rights to their own work with electronic rights. Someone’s got to be the vanguard, protecting the rights of all of us to our own labor. I am profoundly grateful to Whedon (and not just for Buffy– but Joss, thank you! for the best TV I ever experienced :) and other TV writers for using their greater success to make a stand for all artists, even those who aren’t powerful enough to make Hollywood whimper.

The Times reporters might be stupid enough to think unions are irrelevant to their sheer greatness. But when I see Jane Espenson– one of the best writers alive, as I’m sure her former boss Joss Whedon would agree– there on the picket line, I know that greatness is magnified when it’s shared.

TheOtherWA @ 42

The studios want to pay the writers once for projects while the studio will make money from digital downloading for decades.

It ain’t complicated. Writers should get their cut as long as the studios do.

Exactly– it’s incredibly simple. If a studio is required to pay a portion to the writers for a dvd production, they should be required to pay a portion for a digital download. If the studios want to offer those downloads for free, with no advertising revenue, there’s an argument for not paying the writers, but if they receive any revenue for it, it’s an easy call.

The WGA reminds me very much of the Democrats. I completely support everything the guild is fighting for – just like I support everything the Democrats want to do – but their strategy SUCKS.

Signed a WGA member who now works in Reality.

The only pension Tony Snow has is because used to belong to a union, is that funny or what?

I, for one, am so happy that they have taken to the streets and fighting back!!!

Now….the rest of the Nation has to start fighting back the same way…critical mass is approaching.

The hardest work I have ever done is write a novel. Everyday for a year I worked on the sucker. Wish they had a union for that. Leave it to me to be all entrepreneurial.

And as a painter I hate, hate, hate it when idiots people look at a painting and say “I could do that”.

It’s always been so strange to me how disrespected writers are in the entertainment industry. It is perhaps the most important job in the process.

You can have the best actors, cinematographer, editor, gaffer, etc. in the world on a project, and if it’s written poorly it’ll be shit and won’t sell.

Conversely, an incredibly written script can be highly engaging and a blockbuster, possibly win an Oscar, even though the acting, photography, editing, and gaffing are shit.

All the more reason that writers are as entitled to good pay and residuals as any job in the process.

Best quote I heard about writing:

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit & think until little drops of blood appear on your forehead”.

I can’t write. I don’t do a good job of typing.

Last I heard, the Times was still a Guild paper. But you’d never know it by the way the place honors union members.

I was a member of the National WRiters Union when it won the suit against the grey lady on behalf of freelancers.

Matay @ 45

Truth is, just a few years ago, it was the free-lancers who forced the Times to recognize their rights to their own work with electronic rights.

So what did the Times do after the Supremes ruled in favor of freelancers? Adjust rates? Do anything nice? Of course not. They sent out a nasty letter saying you had to sign immediately and give away all rights to previous work or you would be stricken from their database.

Which is why, if I google for my real name, I find nada in there.

I think it was Red Barber who said something along the lines of “Writing is easy. Just open a vein and bleed.”

while I, in spirit, support the writer’s in their strike against MEGACORP.DEATHGRIP INC I suppose I have a special place in my heart for the brilliant writers of CSI Miami who figure out exactly what Horatio says when he takes off his sunglasses.

marymccurnin @ 50

The hardest work I have ever done is write a novel. Everyday for a year I worked on the sucker. Wish they had a union for that. Leave it to me to be all entrepreneurial.

And as a painter I hate, hate, hate it when idiots people look at a painting and say “I could do that”.

indeed Mary, indeed.
My dead aunt’s pet chickadee could have painted that.

oh really?

What aspect of De Chirico’s ‘alienation’ did your aunt’s bird mostly recreate?

John Edwards will honor the picket line of the WGA and will not cross the picket of CBS News for the presidential debate – if it comes to that. I love it. I would love to see John Edwards outside the building carrying a sign with the other candidates inside! He rallied the namby-pamby hotel workers in Chicago last summer who had been picketing for FIVE years! I’d like to see how tough the New York Times writers are – not as tough as those hotel maids and janitors, I’ll bet.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Today, Senator John Edwards released the following statement:

“Elizabeth and I will honor the members of the Writers Guild of America who are on strike at ‘The View’ by canceling our appearance on the show next week. I call on all of my fellow candidates and their campaigns to do the same.

“In addition, we will also honor any picket lines at CBS News, up to and including the CBS presidential debate on December 10th. As I said when I walked the WGA picket line in California last Friday, these workers are making a simple request for their fair share of the huge profits being made by multinational media corporations.

“I am a strong believer in collective bargaining, and I hope that in each of these disputes, management and the union are able to agree on a just settlement. But until those settlements are reached, I will stand firmly with these workers in their fight for a better life.”

Writing (academic publications) is easily the hardest thing I do. I can teach a college-level class, no problem–some time investment, you bet, but no problem. I can do the nose-to-the-data aspects of research without suffering. But writing is HARD. Trying to anticipate what reviewers want to see, taking good editorial advice without losing the point I’m trying to make, just feeling like I’ve written a sentence worth somebody’s time to read…it’s HARD. It’s stressful. It’s anxiety-provoking.

Give these guys what they deserve for what they do. Starting with a little respect and gratitude from the execs who make a mint off their work, and proceeding to the cash.

The NYT is the modern American version of the French court and artistocracy before the revolution. And George W. is our version of Louis XVI.

Elisabeth Bunmiller is your classic court stenographer.

Funny, those “my daughter writes poetry” people aren’t going to look at someone who says “I drive a truck” and say “Oh, my teenager is learning to drive.” They don’t tell a chef “I know how to scramble eggs.”

Isn’t this about the studios paying the writers one time and reaping income from the writings forever without any further compensation to the writers? I never got that from the NTY article.

Vicki @ 59

Funny, those “my daughter writes poetry” people aren’t going to look at someone who says “I drive a truck” and say “Oh, my teenager is learning to drive.” They don’t tell a chef “I know how to scramble eggs.”

and who tells plumbers that doing the work for free will be ‘good exposure?’ :-)

what do you do?

I’m a submarine commander.

oh, i can swim too.

my kid could drive a submarine

scottymac @ 60

Isn’t this about the studios paying the writers one time and reaping income from the writings forever without any further compensation to the writers? I never got that from the NTY article.

Every contract computer programmer knows the feeling. You write a program and they use it over and over and over and you only get paid once.

How many jobs are like that?

Corporate Cows: A Cautionary Tale

A megacorporation is looking for business to snap up and buys a dairy. They know nothing about dairies, but so what. Naturally, they want to find a way to squeeze more profit out of it. The money guys go in there and figure out they can save money if they don’t feed the cows such expensive food. When the dairy business fails because the milk is no good, they blame the cows.

I hate to say this (trust me, I do) but most Americans are like this. They never think of the background to a teevee show. They just think of whether they like it or not. Fair enough. BUT, then why comment on a strike? If you know nothing about the jobs of those striking, don’t comment on it, or even think, “Lazy bums.”

I guess it was because I put up with this my whole childhood. My father was a college professor. And not just that, in humanities. Worthless, in rural Oklahoma, where hunting and guns RULED. Too many would comment on his profession, without knowing a single thing about it. (And one Art teacher in Jr. High School acted on this. He held up a picture of a great art work (but not common, like the Mona Lisa) and said, “I painted this in college, and I got a C!”) You can say about anything to too many Americans, and get away with it.

America really needs more white-collar unions, for a bunch of reasons.

First, obviously, is that they’d be good for white-collar workers. If you’re a computer programmer and the bosses say there’s a big deadline and you have to work 80 hours a week for the next two months, you want a union that demands that you at least get paid time and a half for giving up a big extra chunk of your life, rather than being a ‘professional’ whose time after the first 40 hours each week is a free resource to teh company.

Another is that if white-collar workers had successful unions, they’d feel a lot more kinship with blue-collar workers who need the unions even more than they do.

A third, and the one relevant here, is that white-collar folks are the pundits’ real audience. And if that audience was full of people who could speak from firsthand knowledge in pointing out why The Village’s anti-union bias was so ridiculous, the feedback might force them to change their tune.

Writer = Deadlines

“The did not say they wanted it good, they said they wanted it by Thursday” God I hate quoting Ronald Regan, but then again it was some writer who rit dem wrds.

And as a painter I hate, hate, hate it when idiots people look at a painting and say “I could do that”.

A friend of mine, also an artist, hears that now and again and his response is: “But you didn’t.”

Shuts ‘em up every time.

I was trying to quote marymcurnin there, at 69.
Sumfin’ happened.
More coffee….

low-tech cyclist @ 67

America really needs more white-collar unions, for a bunch of reasons.

First, obviously, is that they’d be good for white-collar workers. If you’re a computer programmer and the bosses say there’s a big deadline and you have to work 80 hours a week for the next two months, you want a union that demands that you at least get paid time and a half for giving up a big extra chunk of your life, rather than being a ‘professional’ whose time after the first 40 hours each week is a free resource to teh company.

Another is that if white-collar workers had successful unions, they’d feel a lot more kinship with blue-collar workers who need the unions even more than they do.

A third, and the one relevant here, is that white-collar folks are the pundits’ real audience. And if that audience was full of people who could speak from firsthand knowledge in pointing out why The Village’s anti-union bias was so ridiculous, the feedback might force them to change their tune.

Totally spot on!

Oh, c’mon, we can do without their “work.” Sure, just get everybody in the country to throw away their tv sets — let’s see how easily that goes over.

I am a faculty at a university in Canada, where many university faculty are unionized. We went on an eight-week strike in 1997 and faced ridicule in many quarters (mostly from non-striking faculty) that this was not a “real strike”, that faculty unions were not real unions (incidentally, this came most frequently from our Marxist brethren who did not support the strike; they felt that we were not sufficiently working-class to deserve a real union.) This despite the fact that we were out picketing in a very cold wet Canadian Spring and often threatened by outraged motorists trying to get on campus. Several of our members were hit by cars and one was killed. The best remark on the whole ‘real strike’ thing was given by a Teamster who asked if we had a ‘fire-barrel’, which we did because of the cold and damp. When we said yes, he said “Well, then it’s a real strike.”