There are a lot more ins and outs on the writers’ strike than I think Jeff Jarvis realizes. He’s posted saying that networks should be using YouTube talent to fill the voids made by the writers’ strike because it’d be cheap labor and potentially a good fix, and so on and so forth.

Firstly, cheap labor is so insulting. To revisit a theme from about a week ago, I’m really tired of anybody considering “YouTube talent” as cheap labor. And it’s happening a lot. Sure, people will say that shows like Online Nation, which bought, for between zero and several hundred dollars, videos from folks who were posting on YouTube, thereby give them their only shot at exposure when they were played on national TV.

But honestly, a lot of the stuff that happens like that is a little exploitative. And Jarvis’ proposed solution here is doubly so: it would exploit the video talent — such as it is — from YouTube and it would further exploit the striking writers.

So it goes. Plenty more opinions on this, but a head cold calls. Email or comment if you’d like to have a chat about it. Beginning to use Skype more frequently, by-the-by.