Why I'm Happy to Be On Strike

As a former journalist, it was an easy decision

Over the past few days, I’ve had friends and acquaintances ask if I really want to be on strike — if I really believe it’s worth it.

For me, the answer is an easy Yes. And it has to do with my previous career as a journalist.

Before I was a TV comedy writer, I was a technology reporter for the Huffington Post, and then Yahoo News, and then Fusion.

And throughout that decade, journalists like me saw the same story play out in newsroom after newsroom after newsroom: The owners of your publication got insanely rich while you and your colleagues attempted to scrape by on the meagre paychecks you were forced to accept.

You saw it at Vice, where CEO Shane Smith made hundreds of millions of dollars while paying his writers Food Stamp wages; you saw it at BuzzFeed, where Jonah Peretti became ridiculously wealthy while screwing over the writers who made his site popular; and you saw it at the Huffington Post, which was famous for its paltry wages, and which sold for $250 million in 2011.

The year that HuffPo sold for $250 million was, incidentally, the year I started writing there. My salary was $32,000 a year.

After a year, because I was one of the top traffic grossers in the newsroom, I got a “generous bump” in my salary to $38,000/year. Two months later Arianna Huffington bought an apartment in SoHo for $8.3 million.

You can tell a similar story about virtually any newsroom in New York City throughout the 2010s. No one in the newsroom could afford to rent their own 1-bedroom in Manhattan, much less buy one.

You were just supposed to be happy to be writing, and to be making any money at all.

You heard it again and again and again in journalism. Publication owners cried poverty during the week and retired to their seaside mansions on the weekends. Executive pay ballooned while the Writers who made these publications popular scrounged together lunch money.

As far as I can tell, it’s only gotten worse since I left journalism in 2017: freelance rates are atrocious; starting salaries don’t cover rent; and newsrooms get gutted with the regularity of an annual physical, all while the guys in charge get paid like All-Star shortstops.

I don’t want what happened to Journalism to happen to Television Writing.

But the studios’ counterproposals show that is exactly their plan: to use this transition from cable to streaming as an excuse to lower our pay and cut our benefits while sacrificing nothing themselves.

I am incredibly fortunate to be one of the few TV writers who has a steady, well-paying job. I’m not applying to work at Regal Cinemas in between gigs as an award-winning writer, or doing months and months of free script rewrites while a producer dangles a paycheck over my head.

And I am more than happy to sacrifice my salary for a little while if it means winning stronger protections and fairer pay from these studios, which remain incredibly lucrative for executives and shareholders.

So, no, I don’t regret being on strike. My only regret is seeing Writers shortchanged and disrespected in yet another creative industry.

And because of that, I’m happy to picket until my sneakers give out if it means a contract that brings everyone — not just the guys on top — closer to fair compensation. Hashtag: No Regrets.