Tune in on Wednesday, Feb. 29 at 1 p.m. Eastern when the next broadcast of Studio SPJ will feature a talk with the author of a new book on the assassination of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey.

Our guest will be Thomas Peele, an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group, whose new book is titled, “Killing the Messenger – A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist.”

Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was shot to death on Aug. 2, 2007, as he walked to work. The book tells the story of Bailey’s murder, the history of the Black Muslim movement, and the Oakland cult that his killers belonged to.

Thomas Peele

Peele became one of the lead reporters for the Chauncey Bailey Project – a consortium of news organizations, freelance journalists, educators and students who sought to investigate the shooting.

The Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of the Society of Professional Journalists contributed a $20,000 grant toward the Project.

In June 2011, a jury convicted Yusef Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, on charges that he ordered the murders of Bailey and two other men.

Bailey, 57, had been working on a story about financial problems at the bakery. He was the first journalist murdered over a domestic story in the U.S. since Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing.

Linda Jue, former president of the Northern California Chapter of SPJ will serve as moderator of the 30-minute program.

Studio SPJ is an Internet radio program featuring conversations with journalists.

Listen to this program live or access the archived podcast on BlogTalkRadio. To call in during the program with a question, call 347-857-2441.

Find “Killing the Messenger” on Amazon.com.

More education, training and discussion is needed so journalists – especially new college graduates – have a solid understanding of ethical behavior and potential conflicts of interest. That was part of the discussion in a recent Studio SPJ podcast on The Ethics of Freelancing.

Jeff Cutler, freelance content creator and social media strategist, and SPJ Ethics Committee Chairman Kevin Smith joined Studio SPJ Producer Holly Fisher for a discussion on recent ethical lapses involving freelancers as well as media outlets using freelance journalists.

Listen to the archived podcast.

Some examples of ethical issues:

• Seattle Weekly’s Liysa Northon, Ann Rule Story Lacks Huge Disclosure
• Utah mayor uses fake name to write good news about his city
• Photoshopped-train image leaves cautionary tale for media

Other conversations on this topic:

• Public Radio and the Freelance Journalist
• On the Media: Journalists Holding Signs
• Journalists Are People Too

SPJ’s Code of Ethics is widely accepted as the ethical standard for journalists. To clarify SPJ’s position on certain ethical themes in the code, SPJ’s Ethics Committee is creating a series of position papers to provide better guidance.

More and more journalists are turning to freelancing but does that mean they abandon their ethics simply because they aren’t employed by a single news outlet? There have been some disturbing examples of ethics getting lost in the world of freelancing. Join Studio SPJ host Holly Fisher as she talks with freelancer Jeff Cutler and SPJ’s Ethics Committee Chairman Kevin Smith on the ethics of freelancing. Tune in at 3 p.m. (EST) Monday, Dec. 19. Listen online and call in to join the conversation: 347-857-2441.

It’s been disturbing to watch journalists around the country arrested for simply doing their jobs covering Occupy protests. From New York to California, Occupy protesters have been making headlines and, unfortunately, so have the journalists covering the events. Studio SPJ hosted a discussion on this topic with Paul Fletcher, Virginia Pro SPJ President, and Mickey Osterreicher, counsel for the National Press Photographers Association.

Listen to the archived podcast.

Virginia Pro is one of the local SPJ chapters that issued a letter of objection to arrests in their area. Read more about what happened in Virginia and the pro chapter’s response. SPJ also issued a statement this month calling on city officials to drop charges against journalists covering the protests.

Our discussion during the podcast revealed the general public doesn’t always agree that journalists should be allowed to freely cover these protests. A greater level of education is needed. And that is one way journalists all over can get involved – write about what’s going on and get the word out there.

Other Occupy tidbits:

Josh Stearns, associate program director at Free Press, is maintaining a list of journalists arrested. Also check out his blog, Groundswell.

Read about Nashville Scene reporter Jonathan Meador’s arrest ordeal.

Back in September, the Health Resources and Services Administration removed the Public Use File of the National Practitioners Data Bank. The file was a resource for journalists and the public to gain information about medical practitioners, including doctors. Led by the Association of Health Care Journalists, a coalition of journalism organizations publicly objected to the removal. HRSA has restored the file to public view … BUT … there is a heavy caveat to the data being brought back. Users of the data set must agree not to repost or share the data on other websites, and cannot use it to identify an entity or individual (such as a doctor) by name.

We gathered some key players in this discussion together to talk about the far-reaching ramifications of public records with strings. Weighing in on this discussion are SPJ President John Ensslin, AHCJ President Charles Ornstein and Kansas City Star reporter Alan Bavley, who was threatened with a fine if his newspaper published a story that used confidential information from the data bank. The Kansas City Star chose to publish the information.

Listen to the Nov. 13 episode of Studio SPJ.

More resources on this topic:

SPJ: Public data bank file restored, but with major restrictions

SPJ: National Practitioner Data Bank restricted: How you can help

On the Media: The loss of a valuable journalistic tool

Association of Health Care Journalists and check out their timeline and resources on this subject

Amy Ellis Nutt of the Star-Ledger of New Jersey was our guest on a recent episode of Studio SPJ.

 Nutt talked about her story “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in April. The 20-page special section told the story of the sinking of a scallop boat off the coast of Cape May that left six dead.

 She also discussed her new book “Shadows Bright as Glass” which tells the story of a man who suffered a brain trauma that led him to become an artist.

Nutt talked about the day she learned that she had won her Pulitzer in this excerpt from the broadcast.

“Honestly it was a complete surprise. In this day and age, I think that’s unusual.

“We had sort of received word that I was not a finalist. It’s something that’s not made public, but newspapers have a way of finding out these things.

 “And so it was my belief that I was not even a finalist. I wasn’t even thinking about it that day. That Monday was supposed to be a day off for me because I worked on the weekend.

 “So my editors had to trick me into coming in. There was a publisher’s meeting and I was thinking, my God, what’s going to happen? Are there going to be more cutbacks?

 “So if you’ve seen any of the photos or videos I was wearing sneakers and a hoodie.

 “Q: I thought that was basic Star-Ledger gear.

 “A: Well, you know, sometimes it is for me, on Fridays and weekends it’s very dressed down for me. But I was just coming in for the meeting. Then I was going to go back home.

“ So it was a tremendous surprise and exhilaration. They had called my family unbeknown to me so that both my parents and two of my sisters and a brother-in-law were there, which was just marvelous. It was wonderful for the paper.”

 The Oct. 1 program was sponsored by the New Jersey pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

To hear the entire 30-minute broadcast, go to:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/spj/2011/10/01/studio-spj-with-amy-ellis-nutt

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt of the Star Ledger in Newark, N.J. will be the featured guest on the next edition of SPJ Radio on Saturday, Oct. 1 at noon Eastern.

Nutt will talk about her career and her new book, “Shadows Bright as Glass” which tells the story of a man whose damaged brain drives him incessantly to create art.

In April, Nutt won the Pulitzer Prize for feature reporting for “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” a 20-page special section about the mysterious sinking of a fishing boat off the New Jersey coast in 2009.

Nutt has been a staff writer at The Star-Ledger since November 1997. She also is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

For more about Nutt, visit her website.

This half-hour program is sponsored by the New Jersey Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. SPJ member John Ensslin will serve as moderator.

Studio SPJ is an Internet Radio program that features conversations with journalists.

For more about the series, visit SPJ’s Liner Notes blog.

To listen to the program live or later as a podcast, visit this link:

To call in live during the program, call 347-857-2441.

A life and death tale of mountain climbing will be the topic of our next episode of Studio SPJ on Saturday, Aug. 20th at noon Eastern.

Our guests will be Jim Davidson, a climber and science writer from Fort Collins, Colorado and Kevin Vaughan, a reporter for The Denver Post.

They are the co-authors of the recently published book “The Ledge – an Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier.”

The book tells the story of a 1992 incident in which Davidson and fellow climber Mike Price were trapped deep inside a glacial crevasse.

This episode of Studio SPJ is sponsored by the Montana Pro SPJ chapter. Chapter President Ian Marquand will serve as moderator.

Studio SPJ is a series of conversations among journalists on interesting topics. 

For more information on the program, visit SPJ’s Liner Notes blog at:

http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/linernotes/

Here’s the link to listen to the program live on Aug. 20:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/spj/2011/08/20/st-udio-spj-the-ledge-a-survival-story

To dial in during the live broadcast with a question call 347-857-2441.

Karen-Lee Ryan

Studio SPJ recently featured an interesting discussion on how to use social media tools to better cover and report natural disasters.

Our guests included Rick Smith of the National Weather Service in Oklahoma City and Karen-Lee Ryan of the Tennessean in Nashville.

Here’s an except in which Ryan explains how her newspaper used YouTube by posting a news video of a flood and got dramatic results in terms of viewership.

“Not a lot of folks knew that Nashville was underwater. It somehow didn’t make it into the national media. There were a couple of other big national stories going on.” Ryan said.

“And we had exclusive footage inside the Opryland Hotel. And that is where a lot of people who’ve been to Nashville – they’re familiar with Opryland.

“And so when we put a video out there showing Opryland Hotel under ten feet of water and inside the rooms and public spaces suddenly we saw on Google that “Opryland Hotel flooded” became a search nationwide.

“And that’s actually how a lot of people found out that Nashville was having flooding.

“So we used YouTube and that video ended up getting more than 500,000 views in a couple days and rose to the number one video on YouTube.”

You can listen to the entire podcast of this program by clicking here.

This program was co-sponsored by the Arkansas and Oklahoma pro chapters of SPJ.

Tune in to a very timely episode of Studio SPJ on Saturday, June 25 at noon Eastern when the Arkansas Pro SPJ chapter hosts a discussion of how to cover natural disasters using social media.

During the recent series of catastrophic floods and tornadoes, many reporters have turned to programs like Twitter to help them explain and tell breaking news stories in the wake of disaster.

Guests for this program will include Karen-Lee Ryan of the Tennessean in Nashville, who coordinated social media coverage that was part of their Pulitzer-nominated work on local floods.

Our other guest will be Rick Smith of the National Weather Service in Oklahoma. He moderates the NWS Twitter account for his offfice and has dealt with everything from tornadoes and flooding to snow and ice storms.

The half-hour program will be hosted by Kelly MacNeil of public radio station KUAR in Little Rock and president of the Arkansas Pro chapter.

To listen to the program live or hear a podcast later, click here.

To take part in this conversation, dial in about ten minutes after the program begins by calling 1-347-857-2441.

Studio SPJ is an ongoing series of conversations on topics of interest to journalists, hosted by various SPJ chapters.