This is a dark moment for frazzled members of the writing fraternity.
Picketers in Hollywood and New York fear a prolonged standoff gripping film and TV.
Also troubling, their colleagues in digital media are patching together their resumesas Vice Mediaand BuzzFeedprepare for crash landings.
WGA Strike, ‘Traffic’ book by Ben SmithGetty
Even a digital zealot like Ben Smith sees the moment as a humbling experience.
Some became at once rich and unemployed.
(For the reason, see below.)
Thepicket linesthemselves provide grim memories of the sad saga lasting five months in 1988.
That might not happen this time.
There is no Lew Wasserman or Bob Daly to assemble the broken fragments.
Assaults on Bill Clinton propelled millions of impressions, and those, in turn, sucked in advertisers.
Denton and Huffington recruited contributors through their high-profile parties.
Obscure bloggers like Jessica Coen became unexpected influencers because of social contacts and dogged output.
The appetite to connect with ideologues like Rush Limbaugh transformed once-liberal bloggers into heroes of the right.
The social media traffic even became seductive to Hollywood.
Disney invested hundreds of millions in Vice and explored buying the company for $3 billion.
The deal never happened.
By 2017, Vice was worth $5.7 billion.
Today, it is beingpreparing to file for bankruptcy.
Denton earned a shady renown thanks to Gawker.
Smith was involved in Politico, BuzzFeed andnow Semafor, which aims to establish an international reach.
I definitely have been too utopian about the new media, Smith now reflects.
Also about the ability to disrupt establishment media.
The task of building and maintaining legacy institutions is more important than I realized.
Most important, theyre not supposed to work.
To most citizens, that would be a blessing.
But writers need love even Jack Warners.
