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POP! WRITERS' STRIKE COULD END TODAY

Hollywood writers got their first look Saturday at details of a tentative agreement with studios that could put the strike-crippled entertainment industry back to work, an offer the union's East Coast president said Saturday he would endorse.

Writers gathered behind closed doors Saturday afternoon in New York and were meeting later in Los Angeles to consider the deal that guild leaders said "protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery."

Compensation for projects delivered via digital media was the central issue in the 3-month-old walkout.

"I believe it is a good deal. I am going to be recommending this deal to our membership," Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, told reporters before the New York meeting at a Times Square hotel.

Writers leaving the two-hour-plus New York meeting characterized the membership's reaction as generally positive. "There's a general feeling of tremendous success. I was delighted," said TV writer John Simmons, who estimated that about 500 writers were on hand. "We agreed that this looks pretty good. ... It bodes well for the future."

Michael Moore, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and a nominee this year for his health care film Sicko, attended the New York meeting.

"It's an historic moment for labor in this country," Moore said.

The guild's board could vote Sunday to lift the strike order and the industry could be back up Monday.