Who is blogging for Dwight during the strike?
Digital Media Law Blog, maintained and written by Jonathan Handel, raises an interesting question regarding TV characters who keep a blog on the official studio websites, such as the one on NBC: Schrute Space (by Dwight Schrute of the The Office.)
Assuming that it is the show’s writers who create the contents on blogs like this, and if this were the case, Handel is asking whether or not these writers, who are obviously affiliated with WGA, can continue working on these blogs in between strike negotiations or have they, in fact, broken union rules?
For if you look at Schrute Space, the weblog was updated a couple of weeks after the strike took place, November 22 to be precise.
Under WGA’s strike rules, a member is prohibited from “writing services performed for a struck company in connection with new programming intended for initial viewing on non-traditional media”. Is web-blogging part of the non-traditional media and new programming?
To find clarity on the matter, the WGA has officially sent Handel a reply through their spokesperson, Gregg Mitchell saying that TV blogs are deemed as “extensions of the show” and as such, any form of writing for internet content on these official websites are regarded as “prohibited” during the strike period.
Handel further points the issue out by taking cue from the 2004 Sideletter on Literary Material Written for Programs Made for the Internet where “literary material” is considered to cover “dialogue, sketches, narrative synopses, routines, and narrations”. All these seem to speak of materials written for TV blogs, and yet TV blogging hasn’t been clearly and actually defined.
Who has been writing Schrute Space all this time, and especially after the strike began? Is it really someone affiliated with WGA? Or is it a freelancer? Or was it a pre-written blog entry only published days after the strike?
Inquiring minds want to know.
The Office, Dwight Schrute, Schrute Space, WGA, Writers Strike
December 10th, 2007 at 9:32 am
[...] other news on the strike, follow this and [...]
January 28th, 2008 at 9:03 am
[...] despite the strike, the blogs of Dwight and Creed continue to be updated. I really am wondering what’s the fine print and arrangement for this, considering that these blogs have got to be the workings of a WGA member. Or is it the case [...]