Entertainment freelance journalist Lola Ogunnaike has found the way to make the most out of Twitter when it comes to getting instant reactions from celebrities.

“Twitter has made my job a bit easier because you no longer have to wait for a publicist to give you a quote about an incident or not give you a quote about an incident,” said Ogunnaike in this week’s, “So What Do You Do?” interview. “You can actually go to the celebrity’s Twitter page and usually find the answer right there.

The former New York Times and CNN reporter also found that Twitter can be a great reporting asset when out in the field.

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Last summer, we reported about the temporary move from New York to Los Angeles of New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean. A snappy Twitter exchange (or two) later, we are now happy to herald her participation in Mediabistro’s upcoming online Literary Festival & Workshops, running July 16 through August 1.

Orlean is one of several high-profile speakers set to provide literary wisdom and guidance:

Susan Orlean  Author Journalist, The New Yorker

Constance Hale  Author, Sin & Syntax

Rebecca Skloot  Author, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Jason Boog  Publishing Editor GalleyCat, Mediabistro

Sarah Fine  Author and Child Psychologist

Jason Allen Ashlock  Literary Agent and President Movable Type Management

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In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler chats with Gauri Manglik, the co-founder and CEO of Fondu.

Fondu is an iPhone app that allows users to share bite-size restaurant reviews with their friends (sort of like Yelp meets Twitter).

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

As New York-based media studies student and feministing.com editor Chloe Angyal (pictured) readily admits, pouring over Hollywood romantic comedies for a doctoral dissertation “sure beats poking at a petri dish.” The 2009 Princeton grad is currently working towards this very unusual PhD through the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where she is originally from.

The trends Angyal is focused on include the well-noted move in recent years to expose more of the studio film genre’s male stars. Think Jason Segel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Long, Ashton Kutcher, Ryan Reynolds, Justin Timberlake and several others. But what does this all mean?

They’re all white. They’re all lean and broad-shouldered. They’re all rather muscular. Some of them are toned and sculpted in accordance with superhero standards: Chris Evans was fresh off filming Captain America when he made What’s Your Number? and Reynolds made The Proposal right after he wrapped Wolverine. And, uh, it shows…

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Some very sad news from the ranks of LA’s international entertainment journalist community. Per a report in Screen International, Swiss-born journalist Claudia Laffranchi was found dead in her LA apartment Tuesday by a friend. She was just 49.

Laffranchi was intricately involved with several film festivals, including a brand new one in Cancun that she attended in March. Like many LA-based foreign showbiz journalists, she contributed to a variety of outlets including the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Swiss magazine Il Caffe, Swiss Italian TV and Radio RSI. From her website bio:

For Swiss television, Laffranchi produced a series of profiles of descendants of Swiss-Italian immigrants who moved to California at the beginning of the 20th century. She also produced and directed, together with Alberto Engeli, two 26-minute documentaries: Los Angeles, Switzerland, about young Swiss artists living in LA; and Hollywood, CH, a profile of three very successful personalities of Swiss heritage (businessman Fred Hayman, actor Vincent Perez and production designer Eugenio Zanetti).

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Within the insular confines of SoCal food journalism, a big deal this past week or so has involved the efforts of website Eater LA to expose the identity of incoming LA Weekly food critic Besha Rodell.

The first post by Eater LA editor Kat Odell was on-target, to an extent, as it featured a blown up photo of Rodell moderating a panel discussion at the recent Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. But the picture is no longer there, quickly taken down after its photographer cried copyright.

And so, Odell came back this week with a second reader-provided snap. One that Rodell is actually perfectly OK with:

Thus far, the photographer of this photo has not demanded it be removed. Probably because the photographer may have a vested interest in people thinking that photo looks exactly like me. You’d think Eater, with all its smarty-pants Internet savvy, would know the difference between a credit and a caption. But whatever. Chefs of LA – I look just like that! I haven’t aged a day!

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For years, actor Billy Bob Thornton was approached by various parties looking to convince him to write a certain kind of memoir. But he had no real interest in writing an autobiography, let alone one that might rate as People’s juiciest.

However, as Thornton explained last night on Tavis Smiley, another rascally son of the American South finally convince him to give the book-writing game a try. As a result, there is this month’s new release The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts:

“People have asked me for years to do it. But they want some gossipy celebrity book and I just wouldn’t do it. But [co-author] Kinky [Friedman] said, ‘Hey, why don’t you tell some of those funny stories about growing up and then give you a couple of chapters to gripe about how our society is crumbling, and, you know, we’ll go from there.’”

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Obviously intrigued by the glut of John Travolta gay-masseuse-sex stories coming out  in the tabloids as of late, Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor decided to look into the National Enquirer‘s fact-checking processes. Though she spoke to a few staffers at the Enquirer and its sister tabloid Star who admitted many of their stories were utterly wrong, she seems to have come away impressed with the rigor involved in going after big scoops like the Travolta stories. Sources touting scandalous revelations are routinely given polygraph tests by a former FBI interrogator. No joke.

Writes O’Connor:

“The polygraph is an insurance policy that our lawyers like,” Star editor James Heidenry explained to me. Star‘s third editor-in-chief in little over a year, Heidenry was not on staff during Mr. Clean’s negotiation, but spoke broadly about the magazine’s tactics. “We like to get them too, to be confident with the story and reach a comfort level with it, and to protect ourselves against legal action.” If a story failed the polygraph test, “we would ditch it,” he concluded.

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And in other Sports Illustrated news, Magic Johnson and Matt Kemp are on this week’s cover.

The actual article (by Lee Jenkins) is about the 78-hour sports whirlwind the city of Los Angeles experienced last weekend.

A very good (but lengthy) read that won’t result in any lawsuits.

Former UCLA basketball player Reeves Nelson is filing a $10 million defamation lawsuit against Sports Illustrated for a scathing article by writer George Dohrmann, according to TMZ.com.

In the article, Dohrmann portrayed Nelson as an absolute terror during his time in Westwood, with incidents ranging from urinating on his teammates clothes to stepping on the chest of Tyler Trapani — John Wooden‘s great-grandson.

The lawsuit, that’s scheduled to be filed Wednesday in L.A. County Superior Court by attorney Keith Fink, will include declarations from 18 current and ex-players who deny the allegations about Nelson.