EXCLUSIVE: The WGA East is facing a digital divide that its future officers say poses “an existential threat to the guild” that could lead to it “collapsing.”
Only a few years ago, the vast majority of WGAE members were film and scripted television writers. But over the past five years, an aggressive campaign to organize dozens of digital news outlets including Salon, Slate and HuffPost has changed its demographics dramatically, with its news sectors — broadcast and digital — now approaching 50% of the guild’s total membership.
That digital news organizing campaign has now been put on hold while the guild weighs its options, which includes the possibility of spinning off its digital news members into a completely separate union.
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This change in the WGA East’s demographics has become a key issue in the guild’s ongoing election, which has seen two camps emerge: the Inclusion & Experience ticket, whose leaders pushed for a pause in the organizing of digital newsrooms, and the Solidarity slate, which argues that “it’s important that we continue to organize the entire industry.”
The guild will have three new officers come September 15 – president Michael Winship, vice president Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, and secretary-treasurer Chris Kyle – all of whom are running unopposed on the Inclusion…