Negotiated Pipelines to Screenwriting Work on The Black List

Abstract

This article argues that media professionalization services and their customers negotiate the role of aspirants in media industries. Using the screenwriting website The Black List as a case study, this article analyzes the company’s history, interface, promotional materials, and reception, arguing that The Black List has sought to formalize and standardize the professionalization process for aspiring and professional screenwriters alike as part of a broader entrepreneurial effort to digitalize film development writ large, assessing the value of unproduced film projects according to a universal standard. For aspiring media producers, professionalization services like The Black List are not marginal players in media industries but rather the front lines in an ongoing debate about who has the right to make media. While services like The Black List offer users relatively low-risk means to seek professionalization, they also reproduce imbalanced concentrations of media power, often under the guise of democratizing media culture.