While You Were Writing – 6/15/12

By Sara Castillo, under While You Were Writing. Sara Castillo is a blogger, entertainment writer and editor.

As always, we’re busy reading the wires and scanning pages of magazines to find what we consider the top reads for freelance writers interested in perfecting their craft and building their business.

Don’t forget Contently is hosting the first monthly Freelance Writer Meetup with ZDNet’s Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley, Tuesday, June 19 at Foursquare’s office in NYC. Be there and be foursquared! To learn more about Mary Jo’s experience and future events, visit our Meetup page.

Now on to the stories and happy Friday!

40 years after Watergate, while investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are still reporting on the fallout from the scandal, author Alicia Shepard writes journalists like the famous duo are a dying breed. “When newspapers can’t even cover daily journalism, how are they going to invest in long-term, expensive investigative reporting?”

The Euros are in full swing and football fans the world over are thrilling in victory, agonizing in defeat and formulating arguments to post on their favorite sports journalists’ blogs. But there’s no need for these opinionated (and often drunk) fans to sit on the blogging sidelines any longer. The Guardian is offering a football journalism masterclass with football experts @DaveHytner and Blizzard contributor @JacobSteinberg.

Anyone who has worked at an entertainment website, or even just reads them, knows that images of mugshots = cash money. The New Yorker’s Avi Steinberg dissects the allure of the mugshot. “At first glance, the online culture of mug-shot voyeurism would seem to be the logical extension of our eternal quest for celebrity cellulite. As it turns out, though, celebrity Schadenfreudians are minor players on the mug-shot scene.”

Sweden is tweeting. Not just one or two Swedes, the entire country. And sometimes, things aren’t so pretty on the @Sweden feed. But, Scarlett O’Hara’s texts, now those are quite a read.

Does reading really sets us free? Noah Berlatsky takes a magnifying glass to the suggestion in his review of Belinda Jack’s The Woman Reader on TheAtlantic.com.

Finally, Contently.com’s very own John Hazard entreats journalists to burn bridges … Ms. Magazine senior editor Michele Kort offers freelancers advice on the art of the pitch …Luddite writer Thomas Pynchon succumbs to the e-book … The Awl’s Choira Sicha reads Prometheus star Logan Marshall-Green’s work as a college journalist including a “remarkably phoned-in music review” … and Twitter is giving zombies a run for their money by snatching up brains.

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Images Courtesy of The Guardian.com and The New Yorker.com