What exactly do you think newspaper journalists should do? Beat up on a union whose average member makes 60K a year and that's after they give 10% of their income to an agent and 5% to a lawyer. And that's 60K in a region with a cost of living way above the national average.

These high level showrunners who have refused to cross the picket lines are RISKING THEIR CAREERS for the middle class of their union. WOULD YOU DO THAT?

Writers often can go a year or more without booking a job and often are asked to do tons of free work pitching (coming up with entire scene-by-scene outlines) for writing assignments. Executives often cherry pick (steal) the best ideas from these pitches, essentially using unemployed writers as idea factories.

The bottom line is anyone who knows anything about this situation knows newspaper journalists are sympathetic because they've done their homework. Novelists and playwrights get paid EVERYTIME their work is reproduced or performed. There is no difference between them and Screen/TV writers.

More importantly, the latest poll shows that 69% of LA residents sympathize with the writers, while 8% side with studios. These are people live in the community and know this not a strike about millionaire writers, it's a strike about people with mortgages, children and very simple dreams -- to be able to support their families.

Amen, Nick G.

It's also worth pointing out that for all of the supposedly fawning coverage the strike has been getting, every single article is tinged with the "millionaire" angle that is totally inaccurate.

Certainly, Slate's point of view has been the typically snarky, aren't-they-cute-play-acting-N­orma-Rae attitude the studios would love to project.

One more thing--if the LA Times wanted to take this story as their Katrina, they wouldn't have buried the Fox rally on the second page of their business section. When 4,000 people close a major street in a labor action, some newspapers might see that as page one news, but not the Times. Company town, company paper.

I find it particularly amusing that Shafer's article suggests the L.A. Times is overreporting the strike. Hollywood is where again? The LAT has a column about screenwriting! What despicable panderering to ... their readers?

Likewise, I am unsure why reporting on the effects of the absence of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on book sales should have been done with "irony." I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. Perhaps he thinks books should only be promoted by means of print ads? I don't find it particularly ironic when I see movie ads on websites like Slate's.

Reporting on the reporting can get annoying enough when it's about the presidential race. Done to labor reporting, it cloys even faster.

Exactly...I have been surprised by how many times the LAT keeps playing the millionaire card. The reality is if there were as many millionaire screenwriters as they allude to then none of the writers would strike because they'd be so rich a couple of cents more per DVD or a fraction of download wouldn't matter! The true agenda of the LAT is actually quite transparent and pathetic. They need the ad dollars the studios pump in every week. Follow the money.

I recently signed my first contract with 20th Century Fox, putting me in the rare and privileged category of professional movie-writing-guy (actual feature-writing comprises a fraction of the WGA).

For the record:

1) I live in Austin, Texas.

2) I occupy a 1.5 room studio in a city with a relatively low cost of living.

3) I drive a 2002 Honda Civic I will still be paying off for some time that desperately needs a tune-up.

4) I have recently accepted a job at Hungry Howie's Pizza (seriously) to pay off the credit card debt that even my relatively modest lifestyle has accrued and cannot submit the contracted work in exchange for payment for the duration of the strike.

5) The payment I will at some indeterminate point receive will be sufficient to comfortably support roughly eight months in Austin (probably about half that in New York or L.A.).

6) Boy, the 12,000 spoiled Malibu millionaires that constitutes the WGA sure rankle my knee-jerk Puritanical schadenfreude too, Jack Shafer.

And the laziest thing about Shafer's article is that he makes no attempt to provide a countervailing perspective on the strike. All he does is criticize newspapers for "supporting" it. Well, Jack, why should they not? Do you side with the studios? If so, why? What cowardice.

Oh, I'm so glad other people disliked this article, too.

I live in LA and am in no way connected with the film/television/media of any kind, but this is still a huge deal. It is amazing how permeating the showbiz industry is in this town. Even people who have nothing to do with this strike (like myself) are affected because a considerable portion of people you interact with are dealing with it.

And, yeah, like somebody else said - THAT's why the LA Times is covering it so heavily. The local paper should accurately reflect what goes on in the locality, and to not cover this extensively would be ridiculously pro-establishment.

And last on my list of rages, it upsets me when people think that unions shouldn't be entitled to strike just because they aren't blue collar. Money and income is relative to the location and the particular person's/family's needs. They should NOT have to say, "Oh, well, we're getting by." One shouldn't be prohibited from striking unless it's a matter of life and death. It's only logical that writers should get residuals from new media; they didn't get a great deal on DVD's and now they're trying to avoid making that mistake again. They are thoroughly entitled to that right.

Shafer is nothing more than a shill for the producers. This article is pure hogwash, nearing the level of trolling.

Every writer with 2 brain cells to rub together supports this strike. Writers are currently getting blindfolded and bent over by the studios, and the studios need to accept that their profits are dependent upon talented writers. It's not a one-way relationship, despite what suits would like to tell themselves each morning.

Scab writers? Good luck - the absolute best they can come up with are 2-minute clips on YouTube.

The upshot of all this? The entertainment industry will get new models for distribution. Think about it - what if every useful show only released episodes online? Do you really think you'd still tune into crappy network TV when you weren't following your sports team.. and could hook your TV up to your computer when you felt like watching something.. and the Net's episodes are produced in the same HD clarity?

So, uh...how does one go about getting such a gig, exactly? Seriously.

If it wasn't for the rabble rousing, 99.9%of the people would never know the screenwriters are on strike. Who gives a DAMN ! ! ! !

Don't it make you feel good that your job is so dispensable.? ? ?

Doh, go out and get a respectable job. Then maybe someone will care.

Nice one. How far are you willing to apply that "dispensable" label. After all, you don't necessarily "need" to post trifle on web forums and no one necessarily "needs" to read it. So I assume you would think all the tech support people who go into the production of Slate.com can go get more "respectable" jobs too. Furthermore, Jack Shafer's thoughts aren't worth a hill of beans, either, so he can walk. And the best part of it would be that no one has to hear your opinion, either.

In all seriousness, get a head check. Screenwriters don't feed me or pay my bills but they've made my 9-to-5 regular boring "respectable" white collar drone life a little more enjoyable during the weekdays. And I watch some of it on the web and DVD. So go on, striking writers, it's a capitalist society! Ask for your fair share of the profits.