To do great writing, read great writing. Here’s the great writing I’ve been reading this week:

In honor of Veteran’s Day here in the United States, I’m taking a break from recounting the best news stories I’ve read this week and using this space to honor journalists who cover armed conflicts, including journalists who’ve died this year.

According to the Committee to Project Journalists, 38 journalists have died so far in 2011. Eight were killed during crossfire or combat. The rest died while on dangerous assignments or were murdered. Most were killed in countries such as Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Afghanistan.

According to CPJ, 24 percent of journalists who died this year were print reporters, 21 percent each were broadcast journalists, camera operators or photographers, 16 percent columnists or commentators and the rest editors, reporters for online-only outlets or publishers (some had more than one job which is why the numbers don’t add up to 100 percent).

It’s one thing to devote yourself to your job – and a lot of journalists do. If you check out We Are Journalists, you’ll see plenty of first-person entries from reporters who’ve made the conscious decision to take a job that doesn’t pay well because they think what they’re doing matters. But it’s something else entirely to put your life on the line in pursuit of a story.

War correspondents take that to the nth degree, and for a reason. I was too young to understand much about the Vietnam War except that my dad was in the Army reserve during that time, my aunt’s future husband was serving and there were always news stories about it on TV. It wasn’t until I was older and read Dispatches, Michael Herr’s autobiographical account of the war did I gain a better understanding of what happened and what it must have been like to be there, as a soldier and a reporter.

As part of Portland’s Literary Arts lecture series, I’m going to see Sebastian Junger in February 2012. Junger is probably better known as the author of The Perfect Storm. But his latest book War (2010) and Restrepo, the documentary he made at the same time, cover the time he spent embedded with a platoon of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. I’ll blog about Junger’s talk here, as I’ve done with the other author talks I’ve been to in the series.

Do you have a favorite war correspondent, or war-time account written by a journalist? If so, leave it in a comment.

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UPDATED APRIL 8: Iran has formally charged Iranian-American freelance broadcast journalist Roxana Saberi with spying, news agencies are reporting today. The Times of London reported Iranian media as saying an Iranian deputy processor has confirmed Saberi has accepted the charges. An attorney for Saberi said he hasn’t seen the charges, according to the Times report. Also today her parents were able to visit her in Tehran’s Evin prison for the first time since she was arrested two months ago.

Read the AP’s story on the situation here and the Financial Times’ version here.

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The Committee to Project Journalists is asking writers to help petition for the release of a freelance journalist held without charge in an Iranian prison since last month.

Roxana Saberi, a Fargo, North Dakota, resident and one-time Miss North Dakota, has lived in Iran for the past six years working as a freelance TV and radio reporter for National Public Radio, PRI’s The World, the BBC, ABC News and other media outlets.

CPJ, an independent organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, has launched a Facebook petition drive to collect 1,000 signatures requesting Saberi’s release. Once enough signatures are collected, CPJ plans to send the petition to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to a Fargo TV station report, Saberi told her parents on Feb. 10 that she was arrested after a bottle of wine she’d bought – an illegal activity in Iran – was found in her apartment. She hasn’t been heard from since.

Saberi graduated from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in 1997 and Jack C. Doppelt, a Medill journalism professor, is helping spread word of her plight. “Roxana is a talented and committed journalist, and a person of warmth and good will. She is someone who deserves our attention, support and thoughts,” Doppelt says in an open letter urging journalists to sign the petition.