LOS ANGELES — The town shut down.
Decades of distrust, a growing pay gap and rising technology propelled nearly 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America in November 2007 to join picket lines in defiance of Hollywood's entrenched media companies.
The companies, led by the Walt Disney Co. and Fox, were determined to protect their bottom lines. Writers, in contrast, wanted to wrangle a bigger slice of the industry's riches. After all, how successful would the entertainment industry be without its writers?
