Support the Striking Writers

There’s a great website called fans4writers.com that is trying to organize support for the members of the Writers Guild of America who went on strike this past Monday after negotiations over royalties for usage of their creations in new media vehicles — ie: re-playing TV episodes and streaming movies online, the sale of digital copies of TV episodes, etc.

Philosophically speaking, I’m a union guy first — except in the case of the PBA which royally screwed over its future members during their last go-round of negotiations with the City — and as both a writer and an avid fan of movies and TV, the WGA strike is particularly compelling.  fans4writers offers some practical ways for fans to support the striking writers with more than best wishes: picketing with them, feeding them, and/or sending a postcard to the AMPTP.

I’ll definitely be doing the latter, and am printing out a bunch to take with me to 13 on Monday to browbeat encourage others to do the same, and I’m going to try to organize some friends to hit a picket line or chip in for a pizza run one of these days in the next week or two.

I’ve also created a couple of banner ads for the site — 728×90 and 468×60 — which I’ve sent to them and am running one of over on Spindle.

If you have a website that supports one of those two ad sizes, please feel free to swipe one and put it up, linking back to http://www.fans4writers.com/participate.shtml

And if you’re here in NYC and are interested in hitting a picket line or chipping in for a food delivery, let me know.

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Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.