Jack Shafer: Journalists Covering The WGA Strike Are A Bunch Of Marxist Wanna-Be Screenwriters
Jack Shafer has finally written a column about the WGA strike. But, according to Shafer, the only reason newspapers are dedicating this much coverage to the strike is that reporters are all just a bunch of Marxist screenwriter wannabes!
Per Slate:
One New York Times article from this week noted with no irony how book authors will suffer if Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart‘s shows, now crippled by the strike, don’t get back into production soon. Also, from a distance, the Writers Guild strike shimmers with heroism for liberal journalists at the Los Angeles Times (which has no union) and the New York Times and Washington Post (which have weakling unions). They’re living vicariously through their comrades’ glorious struggle.
This identification runs deeper than labor politics. Where their predecessors once hoped to write the Great American Novel, too many of today’s newspaper reporters and editors will confide over drinks the big screenplay they want to write based on that murder story they covered, that business takeover, that guerilla battle, that crime caper, that city hall corruption saga, and so on.
Our take on this:
1. We better hope and pray that newspapers cover a strike which has crippled one of our nation’s largest industries. Although it’s easy to snipe on television (and God knows we do it often enough), the WGA strike’s economic effects worldwide are kind of insane.
2. The Times article about writers suffering due to lack of access to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report was on to something. If you’re a publicist who’s trying to sell your book to educated 20- and 30- somethings… the Daily Show and Colbert are just about the top venues out there. No other shows featuring authors have the same demographics or ratings — even remotely. Good Morning America for, say, Thomas Frank? We don’t think so.
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