Opinion: In today’s pages: Suits, strikers, and technology
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The editorial board enumerates the reasons why there’s more at stake in this writers strike than the one 20 years ago:
While the writers were walking the picket lines, however, consumers around the world were buying more than 1.8 million pocket-sized music and video players, 600,000 video game machines and countless video games to play on them. They picked up 2.1 million computers, 140,000 camcorders and 9 million cellphones, at least 1 million of them capable of tuning in video from the Internet.Meanwhile, more than 14 million people spent up to two hours a day on MySpace, Facebook or other social networks, and more than 5 million spent about an hour, on average, watching video clips on YouTube....Put another way, consumers are rapidly equipping themselves to tap into entertainment sources that don’t contribute a dime to Hollywood or the writers union.
The board says Southern California deserves more Proposition 1B money because its ports process more goods. The board also weighs in on the economics of the ports’ clean trucks plan.
On the op-ed page, producer Marshall Herskovitz asks if the suits are ruining TV. The New America Foundation’s Andrés Martinez says U.S. immigration policy is keeping talent out of the country. And Scott Olin Schmidt argues that USC sends the wrong message when it continues to honor infamous grad O.J. Simpson.