DIVERSITY STILL SCARCE AMONG SHOWBIZ WRITERS: New reports says push for more minorities has yielded little results.

       The report, authored by UCLA professor Darnell Hunt and recently posted on the WGA Web site, found that women scribes remain stuck at 28% of TV employment and 18% in features while the minority share has been frozen at 6% since 1999.       

       "White males continue to dominate in both the film and television sectors," Hunt wrote. "Although women and minorities closed the earnings gaps with white men in television a bit, the earnings gaps in film grew. These findings are clearly out of step with a nation that elected its first African American president in 2008, a nation in which more than half of the population is female and nearly a third is non-white."       

       The report is the sixth such document generated for the WGA West and focuses on guild data between 2003 and 2007 -- showing, for example, that women TV writers earned about the same in 2007 ($82,604) as they did at the beginning of the five-year report period in 2003 ($82,000) with spikes in 2005 and 2006 while white male writers saw a gain of nearly $4,000 over the report period (from $84,300 to $87,984) after peaking at $100,000 in 2005 and 2006 as earnings for most writers declined in 2007 due to the writers' strike.       

       For minorities, the earnings gap in TV declined between 2003 and 2007 as minority TV writers earned $75,658 two years ago while white male writers averaged $87,984. But in film, the gap has widened significantly with $87,392 for minorities in 2003 versus $90,476 for white male. Minority earnings in film slid to $61,912 in 2007 while white male earnings increased to $98,875.       

       Hunt also praised the WGA West for its new Writers Access Project, a script-judging contest aimed at identifying mid-level diverse writers who appeal to showrunners looking to staff their shows. A total 154 writers submitted scripts and 36 made the final cut with over 140 WGA high-level writers participating in the inaugural judging process earlier this year.       

       A total of 21 writers from the contest landed jobs, including slots at “Cougartown,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Hawthorne,” starring Jada Pinkett Smith. The guild’s now conducting the second contest with a Nov. 30 deadline for submissions and plans to eventually expand the process to the film sector.