Wednesday night at the Salmagundi Club, SPJ’s New York Deadline Club is holding a program that will provide insights on what it takes to make the switch from journalist to mystery author.

Hear from five journalism professionals about what made them look to mystery writing and the type of  skills serve you well in both professions. The panelists for the event are:

• Mary Jane Clark, a former CBS news producer who is the New York Times bestselling author of the “Wedding Cake” series of mystery novels.

• Don Dahler, who currently anchors the weekend morning and evening CBS 2 newscasts and wrote the novels “A Tight Lie” and “Water Hazard.”

• Bruce DeSilva, a former editor at the Associated Press editor and winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2010 for his mystery “Rogue Island.”

• Wallace Stroby, a former Newark Star-Ledger reporter and author of “The Barbed-Wire Kiss,” which was a finalist for the 2004 Barry Award for Best First Novel. 

Larry Light, the executive vice president of Mysry Writers of America, a veteran editor at BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal whose many published books include the “Karen Glick” mystery series, will moderate.

The event starts at 7 p.m. and will be preceded by a  half hour reception. After the event, the panelists will be available to sign copies of their work.

The event is free, but RSVPs are recommended. Click here to let event organizers now if you plan to attend.

The 2012 Society of Professional Journalists Spring Conference is three months away, but conference organizers with the Press Club of Long Island have already made it possible to get a look at the schedule through an app for mobile devices.

Get the downloadable app via Guidebook through any app store (guidebookapp.com/getit).  Or if you prefer, go straight to sked.spjr1c.org and save the page to your device’s home screen.

This year’s schedule will allow you to explore the detailed agenda using multiple visual formats and filters, create a personalized itinerary and discover other attendees, speakers, & exhibitors.

Getting started is easy, simply connect your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account and we’ll show your friends & contacts also attending. Or create a private account to keep your plans to yourself.

Print out your plans to keep them handy or get the most up to date data by using your mobile device or subscribing to the schedule and synchronizing with Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar.

The 2012 Region 1 Spring Conference is March 23rd and 24th at Stony Brook University. For more information or to register, go to the web site for this year’s conference.

While all good SPJ members are focused on the national convention later this month in New Orleans, members of the Press Club of Long Island are busy organizing the 2012 Region 1 Spring Conference, March 23rd and 24th at Stony Brook University.

PCLI’s Bill Bleyer has secured $5,000 in sponsorship funds for the event: $2,500 each from News 12 Long Island and Newsday. And newly elected chapter president Dominick Miserandino has brought in a $300 goody-bag sponsor.

“We are honored to have the support of News 12 and Newsday,” Miserandino said. ” It’s comforting to know that their support this far in advance will help us put on an exceptional conference. We hope their contributions will inspire other media organizations to participate and support the advancement of journalism throughout the region.”

The opening night reception for the event will be held  at the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook on March 23. Some of the panels and professional development workshops will include:

- How to get a job in journalism
- Mobile journalism
- Music journalism
- Video storytelling
- First Amendment legal issues
- Turning journalism assignments into books
- Celebrity journalism
- Newspaper redesign

Register now for one of the year’s premier journalism events. And for more information on what’s in store for attendees, visit the conference web site.

The Press Club of Long Island will be holding a special meeting on Thursday focusing on the relationship between police and the press.

Journalist Phil Datz will be showing the widely viewed video of his arrest as well as video of previous confrontations with police at crime scenes.

The program will feature a panel discussion on journalists’ rights and responsibilities at crime scenes as well the policies that police have and

the training they receive on managing the media at scenes. Panelists will include Newsday Associate Editor Cliff Schechtman and representatives from the Suffolk and Nassau Police Departments. Carolyn James – a former SPJ Region 1 director and the editor of the Babylon Beacon, Amityville Record and Massapequa Post – will serve as the panel’s moderator.

By spotlighting the unjustified arrest of a cameraman by the Suffolk County Police Department,  The Press Club of Long Island was able to convince the law enforcement agency to admit its mistake this week.

The department determined Monday afternoon that news cameraman Phil Datz was improperly arrested for filming the aftermath of a police chase on Friday.  Police Commissioner Richard Dormer urged the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office should dismiss all charges against Datz.

PCLI, the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation’s largest journalism organization, had called earlier Monday for the Department to drop all charges against the freelance video journalist.  PCLI had also demanded that the department investigate the sergeant involved for what video taken at the scene indicates is a clear case of police abuse of authority and infringement of the journalist’s First Amendment rights.

The video shows Datz, who was working for Stringer News Service at the time and had been charged with misdemeanor obstruction of governmental administration, was filming across the street on public property. He had not crossed a police line and was in no way interfering with officers.

When confronted by the Fifth Precinct sergeant, he politely asked where he could film and suggested contacting the Public Information Office but was only threatened. After he moved further away, he was then arrested without cause.

Meanwhile, pedestrians and motorists freely moved around the scene without interference by police.

Dormer said, “The department is conducting an internal review of the incident between a Suffolk County Police Department supervisor and a photographer that resulted in the photographer’s arrest. I am working with the Suffolk County District Attorney to have the arrest nullified.

“The police department believes in keeping an open line of communication with the media and we will be reviewing the department’s policy concerning involvement with the news media. The department will also provide refresher training to all officers regarding the interaction between the news media and department personnel.

The Press Club of Long Island, the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation’s largest journalism organization, is calling on the Suffolk County Police Department to drop all charges against freelance video journalist Phil Datz, who was arrested for filming police response to a car chase on July 29.

PCLI also demands that the department investigate the sergeant involved for what video taken at the scene indicates is a clear case of police abuse of authority and infringement of the journalist’s First Amendment rights.

The video shows Datz, who was working for Stringer News Service at the time and was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of governmental administration, was filming across the street on public property. He had not crossed a police line and was in no way interfering with officers. When confronted by the Fifth Precinct sergeant, he politely asked where he could film and suggested contacting the Public Information Office but was only threatened.

After he moved further away, he was then arrested without cause. Meanwhile, pedestrians and motorists freely moved around the scene without interference by police.

We hope the department will correct this matter and work to avoid this kind of incident in the future.

I’m happy to report that New York Deadline Club President Rebecca Baker has been selected to receive this year’s Howard S. Dubin Outstanding Pro Member Awards.

Baker, along with Utah Pro Chapter member Linda Petersen, will receive the award during the President’s Installation Banquet at the Excellence in Journalism 2011 conference in New Orleans, hosted by SPJ and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

The award is named for Howard S. Dubin, a longtime SPJ member who remains active with the national organization, local chapters and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, the educational arm of SPJ.  Each year, an honoree is selected from a chapter with fewer than 75 members as well as one from a chapter with more than 75 members.

As your regional director, I’m pleased that Rebecca has received this honor since I have had the pleasure of knowing her for more than a decade.

Baker covers Westchester County courts and the criminal justice system for the Journal News in New York’s northern suburbs. But those of us in Connecticut remember her as a loyal and highly motivated SPJ member while work at the New Haven Register before she left to go to work for the Journal News.

She has helped expand the membership of the Deadline Club, which is already one of the nation’s largest SPJ pro chapters with  more than 300 members.  She put together a Freedom of Information panel, an annual event that won an SPJ award in 2010 and has become a staple of the Deadline Club’s annual programming.

Here in Region 1, she also chaired the sold-out 2010 spring conference. Rebecca showed great leadership, working with members of the Connecticut and New Jersey chapters to put on one of the most successful Region 1 conferences in recent memory.

Fellow Deadline Club member John Long said that, “regardless of the challenge,  Rebecca is always her cheerful, enthusiastic, optimistic, upbeat self, leading the charge that the rest of us just can’t resist following.”

Baker said that receiving the award is a tremendous honor for her.

“Howard Dubin has given selflessly of himself to the Society for manyears, and to be in the same company as him is a privilege,” she said.

Hey, Boston area journalists!

Got an idea for a book kicking around in your head?

Then head to the Boston Globe this evening for a program by the New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on “How to Land a Book Deal<” Sign up for the event, which is from 6:30 to 8:30 at http://t.co/yCg2E1i

During our recent national convention in Las Vegas, New York Deadline Club Rebecca Baker approached me, wondering about the possibility of Region 1 taking public positions on issues of concern to chapters.

 I told her that was something that I wholeheartedly supported and lo and behold, the folks from the Deadline Club have taken action. They’ve put this up on the home page of their web site and it’s a message that I think everyone in Region 1 ought to agree with.

“The Deadline Club condemns the systematic violence committed against courageous journalists who have put themselves in harm’s way to document the unfolding crisis in Egypt, and prays for their safety.”

SPJ’s national office will follow up with a statement of its own this afternoon. But the Deadline Club’s simple and elegant statement is evidence that leadership in any organization doesn’t always have to come from the top down.

One of my favorite blogs, NorthEast Radio Watch, has an interesting report this morning about two possible scenarios under which the ABC affiliate in Providence, WLNE, would be sold by its bankrupt owner Global Broadcasting to the Texas-based company, Belo Corp. that owns the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

The scenario that I find the most interesting is the one that has WLNE and the ProJo joining forces under the same roof.

  That has already played out once in New England with The Hartford Courant and WTIC-TV, Fox 61 in Hartford, combining newsrooms.

The question is, if the Rhode Island deal comes to fruition, will we see more of these arrangements in the future in the Northeast?

I’m at an age where I remember the Federal Communications Commission used to have rules that prohibited ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market. But now joint ownership of two powerful media properties in the same city isn’t viewed in the same way.