I traveled 2,000 miles last weekend to spend a few hours in Silverton, Colorado. It was well worth the trip.

A breeze that blew across the old mining town carried four sounds: A dog barking. The spring runoff in the creek behind me. A distant train whistle. A brass band.

The music came from Silverton Brass Band, which was playing John Phillip Sousa’s Washington Post March. This seemed fitting since they were there to celebrate SPJ honoring The Silverton Standard & The Miner as one of our Historic Sites in Journalism.

Here’s a clip that sets the scene:

Next, here’s a video of Mark Esper, the paper’s editor and publisher, in Victorian period garb, who tells a bit of the paper’s history and why being added to the SPJ list was such an honor.

What happened to the paper in recent years is one of the great “feel good” stories about journalism in recent years. In this clip, Fritz Kinke, a printer and board member with the San Juan Historical Society, explains the Society’s decision to buy the paper and run it as a non-profit.

And finally, here’s is a clip of the Silverton Brass Band, playing their rendition of “Kansas City.”

What was really heart-warming about this story is that we were honoring not just a historic newspaper office but the unbreakable bond that has developed between that paper and the community it has served since 1875.

One of the pleasures of being SPJ president is the opportunity to preside over meetings with lots of intelligent discussion on large, meaningful issues.

That was the case Saturday in Indianapolis when the national SPJ board gathered for its spring meeting. We took on several big topics. Here’s a brief recap of what was discussed:

- Past president Hagit Limor briefed us on the email ballot system we will be using in September when all 8,000 SPJ members will have their first chance to directly elect officers under the one member, one vote rule we adopted last year.

We also approved a set of campaign guidelines for candidates that reaffirmed our long-standing tradition that board members should not engage in any electioneering for other candidates.

Our plan calls for a process that will enable candidates to send up to three email messages directly to members as well as a means to create candidate websites. You’ll hear more about this in the months ahead.

Much of our meeting was devoted to issues involving growing SPJ’s membership. No surprise there since that had been my emphasis this year.

-We discussed reviving our institutional membership for media organizations on a one-year trial basis. We currently have about 19 collegiate institutional members. We formerly had some newspapers join as institutions, but currently we do not have any.

The board instructed Executive Director Joe Skeel to craft a proposal later this year as well as to explore ways in which we can make SPJ’s presence felt in more newsrooms.

-We had a long discussion on the pros and cons of actively recruiting SPJ members from other countries. We also talked about whether our legal defense fund should be only for U.S. journalists or should it be a global fund.

The board didn’t take a vote on that,  although an informal show of hands indicated a majority of the board favored taking a global approach on both of these questions. This matter will come up for a vote later in the year.

-We also adopted a recommendation from Region 11 Director Teri Carnicelli, by streamlining the requirements for a new campus chapter to form. From now on, such chapters will be required to have one adviser who is an SPJ member rather than three faculty members.

-Sadly, we deactivated several pro and student chapters that we had been carrying on our membership rolls despite the lack of any recent activity. We did, however, welcome a new chapter, the Texas Panhandle Pro chapter.

-Last but not least, the board agreed to locate our 2014 Excellence in Journalism conference at the Grand Opry Hotel in Nashville, TN. I’m very excited by this selection. Nashville is a great city in which to hold a national conference.

Your national board members are a hard-working bunch. They started at 8 a.m., and except for a lunch break, kept going until 5:30 p.m. when we adjourned. I appreciate their effort and attention.

For more than a decade I served as lead mentor in Denver for a journalism exchange program run by the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship.

It’s a great program that brings journalists from other countries to work side by side with their counterparts in U.S. newsrooms.

During that time I worked with journalists from Nigeria, Ecuador, Egypt, Bulgaria, Serbia, China, Cambodia, Russia and the Gaza Strip.

By and large, they were an amazing group of people, many of whom had to exercise a fair amount of courage just to do the type of daily reporting that we here in the U.S. often take for granted.

It was a great experience and one that I’m sure will color my view point as the SPJ board takes up an important policy discussion this weekend on the Society’s approach toward prospective members who live outside the U.S.

Should we actively recruit them? Should we encourage chapters to form in other countries? Should we hold them to the same requirements we ask of domestic members and chapters?

Shortly after becoming SPJ president in September, I asked our International Journalism Committee, through its chairman Ricardo Sandoval Palos, to study this issue and make some recommendations to the board.

The Committee produced a thoughtful document that became the basis for a good discussion that the Executive Committee had on this topic during our winter meeting in Charlotte.

Now that discussion moves to the full board. When we meet in Indianapolis this weekend, I’m planning to ask the board a series of questions on this topic. My hope is that we reach enough of a consensus to help craft a formal policy later this year.

It’s a complex issue. In some countries, concepts we take for granted in the U.S. such as objectivity or acting independently are not universally embraced. In some countries, journalists operate under government imposed restrictions that make those concepts unworkable.

And yet, we live in an increasingly global society where video shot in Syria one moment becomes news in the U.S. a short time later. There’s also a real hunger out there for the training, ethics and ideals that SPJ had stood for in this country.

So we’ll have our talk. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that SPJ already has about 130 members living in other countries.

More than half are part of a thriving student chapter that former Regional Director Richard Roth helped start in Qatar a few years ago under the aegis of Northwestern University.

But the other members come from nearly 30 other countries, including Uzbekistan, India, Mexico, Canada, Morocco, Spain, England, Sweden and Luxemborg.

I believe we need a coherent strategy when it comes to membership in the rest of the world. My hope is that we can take the first steps toward that goal when  we meet in Indianapolis.

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A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled on the “future of journalism” — on what business models will best lead us through the leap from “legacy media” to digital.

Not as much attention has been paid to the shape and architecture of the newsroom.

I think the current configuration of most newsrooms – both in print and broadcast – is outdated. The days of reporters and editors hunkered down in front of a desktop computer seems archaic in a time when technology has made our jobs increasingly mobile.

So, here is a brief description of what my dream newsroom would look like. I offer it knowing full well it runs contrary to the conventional newsroom we’ve all come to know and love for its quirks and eccentricities. And I know it would be outside of most people’s comfort zones.

My dream newsroom actually has an address: 1628 – 16th Street in Denver, in the heart of what is known as LoDo or Lower Downtown Denver.

It is the address of my favorite independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover, which occupies several floors of a classic red brick warehouse built in 1896.

If I were designing a newsroom from scratch, I would embed it inside a bookstore like the Tattered. I’d put it in one of the upper floors, spread across the large open hardwood floor with large windows that overlook the neighborhood.

But instead of the usual set up of desk/phone/reporter, I would have an array of long library tables with the classic green lampshade lights in the center.

Every reporter would be equipped with a computer tablet, a wireless keyboard and a smartphone. There would be plenty of file cabinets along the walls, but data would also be backed up on a cloud system that would allow everyone to retrieve documents.

You take a seat anywhere, file your story, talk to your sources, your colleagues, check your file cabinet, grab some coffee, and you’re on your way.

Part of this has to do with my long-held belief that there’s no news in the newsroom. There are gossip, witty remarks and companionship, but the news for the most part is out there beyond the brick walls.

I’m reminded of something Jimmy Breslin once said about how reporters of my generation grew up watching television and later transferred that skill to staring all day at a computer terminal.

People who do this spend their days talking with other reporters. They don’t tend to do much talking with longshoremen, cab drivers, grave diggers and people in unemployment lines or cops smoking cigarettes outside the station house.

Instead we follow a very human impulse to band together and hang out to the detriment of chasing the news.

The advantage to this hive-like newsroom would become apparent in times of crisis and breaking news. It would be possible to empty out a newsroom and have people set up somewhere closer to where the action was happening.

There are a few other advantages to the newsroom-embedded-in-a-bookstore. The Tattered had a great coffee shop. I could see the staff taking refuge there throughout the day, right next to the out-of-town newspaper rack.

And did I mention the free coffee and tea? Yes the stuff that fuels most newsrooms would be a perk of this newsroom.

It also wouldn’t be bad for reporters to have some casual secondary exposure to new books. I’m convinced one of the keys to good journalism writing is to read widely, especially other good writers.

The Tattered  also had a large room for book signings and author talks. Imagine if the same space could be used on a regular basis by reporters interviewing newsmakers.

One other important feature of this model: it puts us where the audience is. People who buy books tend to read papers. Why not create a place where people could leave news tips?

Now, I know some distance from the public can be a good thing. There are a lot of obsessive people out there who tend to cling to a newsroom like barnacles. I remember one woman who kept telling reporters in one newsroom that she was a Russian spy.

But I also know that many newsrooms have created an almost impenetrable barrier between readers in the form of voicemail and phones that never get answered. A more permeable newsroom could lead to more stories.

I know my dream newsroom would be hell for a lot of reporters who like to claim their own space with their favorite coffee, pictures of family, knick knacks, gadgets, toys and all the stuff that makes the newsroom our second home.

But the news really is out there, and technology enables us to spend a lot more time hanging out in the places where news happens is something we should be taking advantage of as much as possible.

Note: A version of this column also appears in the March/April issue of Quill magazine.

A journalist friend who also is commissioner in a fantasy baseball league to which I belong recently sent an email to all the team owners who also are journalists.

Does playing in a league that features modest fees and prize money constitute a form of sports betting? he inquired. And if so, does that constitute an ethical violation?

After all, he noted, there have been cases where sports columnists have been disciplined and even fired following disclosures that they had placed some rather large bets with gambling bookies.

Ultimately, we decided to go ahead with our league this spring because none of us are sports reporters, the money is nominal and winning requires a lot more strategy and skill than a simple bet.

But I bring up this matter not just because it raised an interesting question but I loved the mere fact that we were having that conversation.

It also illustrates a belief that I’ve long held when it came to journalism ethics.

I’ve never thought of ethics as a high-brow concept or something that we ponder during the occasional panel or classroom discussion. It’s not a code of conduct written in stone or parsed in a textbook.

To me, it’s more like a daily meditation and a way of looking at the world. It’s part of the fabric of everyday life as a reporter, not just on big stories where there are tough decisions and close judgement calls.

I think of it more as a practice that requires some thoughtful behavior on matters as large as a front page story or as small a cup of coffee that we insist on paying for or whether we can place can place a small bet on a sporting event.

Ethical decision making is also something that grows more difficult the harder we work at our craft.

When I’ve talked to student journalists on this topic, I explain that one way they can avoid an ethical dilemma is to not work very hard and not dig very deep.

But then I quickly add that they’ll be lousy journalists if they don’t dig deeper into news stories and willingly put themselves into situations where ethical questions grow more frequent and complex.

That’s also one reason why I like the SPJ Code of Ethics, particularly in the way we apply it not as an immutable set of rules but rather a tool to help working journalists work though those problems.

The latest  issue of Quill is the one we devote each year to stories on journalism ethics. It comes out at a time of year when many of our chapters will be holding ethics events ranging from panel discussions to the popular ethics poker games.

But our preoccupation with this topic is year round and day-by-day.

Small wonder then that journalism ethics is the one area where SPJ is viewed as the industry leader and where our code is seen as the gold standard.

We do a lot of great and important work each year in other areas such as freedom of information, diversity, professional training and defending the public’s right to know.

But our ethics code — as one longtime SPJ member once told me — is our franchise. It’s the area where people both inside and outside our profession turn to us first.

Just within this past year we’ve had a would-be presidential candidate and a school board in New Jersey try to use our code to their own purpose.

In both instances, we’ve had to remind people that one of the strengths of our code and the reason for its durability  is because it is a voluntary set of guidelines that call for balancing competing interests in order to do what is right.

But the fact that they held up our code as something of value is a testament to its strength and utility.

I also love the fact that we’re never done with this work. Last year, SPJ and SDX published the fourth edition of our book “Journalism Ethics – a Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media.”

And this year, our Ethics Committee has undertaken an ambitious project of issuing a series of white papers that elaborate on such topics as political activity and checkbook journalism.

I’d urge you go out and buy the book and read those white papers on our website and thumb through the stories in Quill.

I think you’ll find as I do that not a working day goes by when these guideposts are not useful tools in negotiating and resolving ethical questions, be they large or small.

I’m giving a talk in Tacoma today at the Region 10 Spring conference. I’m on a panel discussion on the arrests of journalists during the Occupy demonstrations. (It’s been a hot topic at various regional gatherings this year.)

Here are some video, I plan to show:

Here’s one from Milwaukee:

Here’s one from Atlanta:

And another from Atlanta.

I’m very excited that SPJ recently opened an account that will enable us to host online meetings and webinars.

We’ve subscribed to GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. While there is a bit of a learning curve to understanding how to operate them, I see great promise here.

For example, let’s say a chapter in New Jersey would like to host a webinar featuring an expert in Denver talking about search engine optimization. We can do that now.

Let’s say the Diversity Committee would like to host a meeting where the members can talk and conduct a video conference. We can do that too.

And let’s say the Executive Committee wants to hold a virtual meeting that other members want to watch live. We can and will do that. Stay tuned for details.

Death of a journalist

Speaking of virtual programs … I thought Linda Jue of our Northern California chapter conducted a really interesting interview last week with journalist Thomas Peele.

Peele talked about his new book, “Killing the Messenger,” which details the background of the 2007 murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey.  It’s not really what you would call a true crime book, but rather a history of the Black Muslim movement and the cult to which Bailey’s killers belonged.

I was particularly fascinated to learn that while Bailey was killed because of a story he was working on, he was not what you would describe as a classic investigative journalist, Peele said.

“Chauncey was a community journalist, editor of a community newspaper,” Peele said. “He wanted to make the community paper, The Oakland Post, stronger.”

“His background was in daily journalism. He had been a reporter at The Detroit News. He was one of those workhorse journalists that we all know who could turn out 2-3 stories a day and fill up the newspaper.”

“…He was a good daily reporter, but he simply didn’t work on long investigative projects. It wasn’t the nature of the journalism that he did.”

Peele described how Bailey was killed over a 15 inch story that had not yet been published when he was gunned down while walking to work on Aug. 2, 2007.

Hear the podcast of this 30-minute program

Mobbed up in Boston

And speaking of crime and journalism, I could not pass up an opportunity to host a segment of Studio SPJ on Saturday, March 10 at noon ET with Boston Globe journalist Emily Sweeney.

Emily is president of our New England chapter and a member of our Digital Media Committee. I’ve been a fan of her work for some time. As a former crime reporter myself, I loved her Globe story, “Greatest Hits – A Mob Tour of Boston.”

We’ll talk about her new book, “Boston Organized Crime.” So be sure to tune in. You can hear the live broadcast or listen later to the podcast here.

Textbook Authors in the Big Easy

Here’s another program that might interest you.

Mary Kay Switzer, a longtime member of SPJ’s Cal Poly Pomona chapter, is national president of the Text and Academic Authors Association, which will host its 25th annual confab in New Orleans June 8-9.

A bit of info on the gathering:

The conference will feature two workshops, more than a dozen sessions and several small-group discussions; the opportunity to meet one-on-one with a veteran author or attorney specializing in educational publishing; and several networking opportunities, including a welcome breakfast and an evening networking reception.

Joy Hakim, author of the ten-volume K-12 textbook series, “A History of US,” and three-volume textbook series, “The Story of Science,” will give a keynote presentation on Friday morning titled, “Textbooks Should Be Great Books!”

And thanks to TAA for sharing information with their members on our SPJ spring conferences.

Poet T.S. Elliot wrote that April is the cruelest month.

But so far this year with the numbers of journalists killed in the last few weeks, I would assign that dismal distinction to February.

Syria has been the source of the most heartbreaking news, where the indiscriminate shelling of the civilian population also claimed the lives of two journalists last week, veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik.

Their deaths came one week after New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, who died of an asthma attack while covering the conflict in northern Syria.

(Though, to be sure, the fourth month is cruel in its own right, as April 2011 brought the deaths of Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington in Libya.)

The loss here is incalculable. All three of these journalists put their lives on the line — as they had so many times before — to describe in basic human terms the harrowing extent of the suffering by Syrians under daily bombardment.

It was particularly chilling to hear Colvin’s voice on CNN as she described watching a 2-year-old child die from a piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest.  Colvin was killed the next day.

It was also incredibly sad to read the final dispatch from Shadid, who by all accounts was one of the best and brightest foreign correspondents. Reading his work, you could always detect a well-spring of humanity and his respect for history.

I was especially moved to hear him in an interview describing how important it was for him to share his knowledge with younger journalists.

Their deaths come against a backdrop of a recent Committee to Protect Journalists report, which found that at least 46 journalists died in the line of duty in 2011, the highest level on record.

Colvin, Ochlik and Shadid all lost their lives while answering the highest calling of our profession, to tell difficult and important truths in the face of tremendous adversity.

On behalf of SPJ, I wish to extend to their families and colleagues our most heartfelt sympathies.

In other news: Be sure to tune in to the next episode of Studio SPJ on Wednesday, Feb. 29 at 1 p.m. ET when our guest will be Thomas Peele.

Peele is the author of a new book, “Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash and the Assassination of a Journalist.”

Peele was one of the lead reporters in a collaborative investigation into the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.

The book tells the story of Bailey’s murder, the history of the Black Muslim movement and the cult to which his killers belonged.

The program is hosted by the Northern California chapter of SPJ. Former chapter president Linda Jue will serve as moderator.

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

What is up lately with a few of the men (and women) in blue acting like they are the Men in Black?

SPJ is tracking the outcome of an internal affairs investigation in Memphis where a local photojournalist contends police tried to prevent him from taking photos and video of a local businessman being arrested in a case that started with a parking violation.

See the story here, as reported by Memphis television station ABC24.

I sent a letter to the Memphis Police Director earlier this month expressing our deep concerns over the allegations.

What’s more troubling though is that this isn’t the first instance where police have been accused of erasing photographs or video of officers making an arrest.

In Baltimore, there is a case making its way through the courts involving a citizen who made a similar complaint about police deleting video he took of a police encounter with his friend at near a race track in 2010.

The U.S. Justice Department last month intervened in a civil rights lawsuit brought by the Baltimore man and stood up for a citizen’s right to record police actions in public places.

“The right to record police officers while performing duties in a public place, as well as the right to be protected from the warrantless seizure and destruction of those recordings, are not only required by the Constitution,” the Justice Department stated. “They are consistent with our fundamental notions of liberty, promote the accountability of our government officers, and instill public confidence in the police officers who serve us daily.”

These two incidents are hardly a trend, and in my view, most law enforcement officers are professionals who know better than to destroy images that could be considered private property or perhaps even evidence.

But they remind me of the running gag in “Men in Black,” where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones keep using their flash pen to erase the memory of what an eyewitness has seen.

It’s no laughing matter when a police officer goes beyond simply impounding a camera and takes the extraordinary step of deleting its contents.

Rightly or wrongly, such an action leaves the public with the impression that the officers have something to hide.

We live in a world where so many people have the capability of taking a picture or video with the cell phone in their pocket.

This is good when it comes to breaking news events. For law enforcement, it can also provide valuable evidence when a crime occurs.

We will monitor how the Memphis case turns out. We’ve also offered our help in starting dialogue with police on the First Amendment issues involved.

Whatever comes of  these cases in Baltimore and Memphis, let’s hope this is more an aberration than a trend.

Our SPJ colleagues in Colorado have produced a video that I’d like to bring to your attention.

It’s a 60-second valentine to the power of journalism called “This I Know.”

The video was born out of the frustration many of us felt after coming so tantalizing close to passage of a national Shield Law for journalists in late 2010.

But then came Wikileaks and the bipartisan support we had won came unglued. At the end of that debate you might have thought that the whole point of the Shield law was to deal with Julian Assange.

Lost in that debate was the simple fact of the people whom a Shield Law was meant to protect, hard-working journalists whose work shines a light on those dark or unnoticed corners of society. It’s work that vital to the health of a democracy.

So last spring, a group of volunteers set out to remind people of the real beneficiaries of a Shield Law – not just the journalists who produce this valuable work – but the readers, viewers and listeners who depend upon it.

To drive home this point, we assembled a cast of mostly non-journalists. They included a lawyer, a hospice director, a public relations professional, a bartender, a gadfly and a law student.

The only journalist in the bunch was a 16-year-old crusading editor of a high school newspaper.

The one common denominator of the group was their appreciation of the work that journalists do.

Under the direction of my SPJ colleague Cynthia Hessin and the camera work of my friend Jerome Ryden, we gathered one Saturday morning in the Denver studio of Rocky Mountain PBS.

They took turns reading lines that began with the refrain, “Because of a journalist…”

“Because of a journalist…I know who used steroids in baseball.”

“Because of a journalist…I know who covered up the Watergate break-in.”

“Because of a journalist…I know about the torture at Abu Ghraib.”

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not a slick video. The people speaking these lines are clearly not polished actors or spokespeople.

They are just regular folks who happen to believe that the work we do matters.

That’s why I screened this video on the night I took my oath as SPJ president in New Orleans.

That’s also why I’m asking chapter leaders if they would consider screening this video at the start of their next SPJ event or posting it to their chapter website.

Will any of this move us one bit closer to a national Shield Law? Not likely.

But in these tough times, I think it’s important to remind people of the value journalism has to the people who rely upon us for the work we do.