Via Atrios, this story could be quite serious.
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Nearly 300 CBS News writers who belong to the Writers Guild of America have voted to authorize a strike against the network, the union said Monday.
Some 81% of voting writers moved to approve a possible strike, the WGA said.
The television and radio writers, working in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have been working under an expired contract since April 2005. The workers have not received pay raises since April 2004.CBS News writers voted to spurn CBS’s contract offer in November of last year, and since then, the network “has refused to put forth any new proposals, insisting on the offer membership rejected,” the WGA said in a statement.
Among other details, the CBS offer would give the network the right to combine WGA-represented entities with non-WGA units. At stations such as WCBS-AM and 1010 WINS in New York and KNX and KFWB in Los Angeles, this could amount to forcing the union out, it said.
If that spreads to the other networks, it might seriously impact news coverage. A lengthy strike might have a real effect upon the primaries, though who it will be good for, I know not. Maybe they’ll have to resort to giving us pure news, without it being shaped to the liking of the proprietor.
Perhaps folks will have to start buying newspapers again. Are newspaper journalists in the WGA too?
It’s not all bad though. If we’re really lucky, Rush and Billo’s joke writers are in the WGA.
If you ha82e&#vn17;t returned to it, you might want to give The Invisible Man another look. It’s been a loooong time since I read it, but I thought it was powerful and funny.