Stewart Will Keep Striking 'Daily' Writers Afloat

[NOTE, 11/9/07: After failing to confirm this report, I decided to retract it. Here's the retraction.]

If the writers strike fails, it won't be on account of Jon Stewart.

In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, the Daily Show host has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report. A Comedy Central spokesman referred my inquiry about this to Stewart's personal publicist, who has yet to respond. [Updated: He denies it. See below.]

Stewart's intention, says the source, is to ensure his writers will face no financial hardship should the strike, which kicked off at 3 a.m. local time, conclude within that timeframe.

Meanwhile, both Stewart and Stephen Colbert are reportedly working on their contingency plans in case it doesn't. "There are indications that Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert will come back in tweaked form if the strike is a long one, leaning on interviews and other writer-free approaches to keep both programs alive in a very busy political season," reports today's Times.

It should come as no surprise that Stewart is a union die-hard: He tells the current issue of Rolling Stone that his childhood heroes included socialist leaders Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas.

UPDATE, 2:20 P.M.: Confusion: Jon Stewart's rep just called back to deny the information above. I checked back with my source, who set me straight on a few details: Stewart is not paying writers out of his own pocket, but through Busboy, his production company. And it's not just writers who are getting their salaries covered but all the shows' employees. "He's hoping that it wraps up amicably and quickly, and over the course of that time he wants to look out for his employees," he says.

But when I ran this by Stewart's rep, he emailed back, "While I hesitate to knock down every rumor that comes up, the assertion that Jon and/or Busboy Productions will be paying for the staff is false and we have no further comment beyond this at this time."

I'm pretty sure there's some truthiness here (sorry), but it may take some more digging to determine exactly what the situation is.