The SPJ Region 11 Spring Conference, set for Friday, March 30-Saturday, March 31 is taking shape.

The conference, hosted by SPJ’s Greater Los Angeles Pro Chapter, will be at the Universal Hilton at Universal City in southern California. Friday features an opening night reception at the hotel, followed by a full day of programming on Saturday and the Mark of Excellence student awards luncheon.

Programs and speakers are being finalized, and registration will open shortly. For more details, check back here, visit www.spjla.org or e-mail Conference Committee Chairman Jeff Wald at JeffWaldSPJ@aol.com.

Thanks to work by SPJ’s Northern California Pro chapter, cartoonist Susie Cagle was cleared of all charges following her arrest at the Occupy Oakland protest in November. Cagle credits the chapter’s letter to Oakland police chief Howard Jordan as the impetus that led to her charges being dropped. “Not the massive amount of media I did afterwards, or my tell-all article shared hundreds of times – it had to come directly across their desk.”

SPJ NorCal issued a letter to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and Chief Jordan condemning the arrest of Cagle during Occupy Oakland protests on Nov. 3. Cagle was arrested and held in custody for 15 hours despite displaying a press badge and  identifying herself as a journalist and despite the fact that an officer at the scene acknowledged his familiarity with her published work.

Newly elected officers for the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists have begun their year-long terms.

The officers are leading a 15-member board, five of whom were elected in December, to serve the chapter, which spans from Ventura through Orange counties.

Alice Walton, publisher and editor of TheCityMaven.com, who was the chapter’s vice president in 2011, began her presidential term on Jan. 1. Freelance journalist and contributing writer to Tehran magazine, Navid Nonahal, will serve as vice president. City News Service reporter Richie Duchon, who is a new associate board member, will be secretary, while Sarah Baisley, the chapter treasurer for more than 20 years who freelances in the wine industry as a journalist and marketing specialist, continues to serve in that role. Frank Mottek, business news anchor for KNX 1070 Newsradio, is immediate past president.

SPJ/LA also elected five members to three-year terms. They are Mottek, Jeff Wald, partner at RealNews Collective LLC, and freelance writer Roberta Wax, who were incumbents. The two new board members are former FOX 11 reporter John Schwada and Wall Street Journal reporter Tammy Audi.

In addition to Duchon, Zach Behrens who is editor-in-chief of blogs at KCET joins the board as an associate board member. Full-time board members Lauren Bartlett and Dan Evans will remain with SPJ/LA as associate board members.

The Society of Professional Journalists is the nation’s largest and most broad-based journalism organization, dedicated to promoting high standards of ethical behavior and encouraging the free practice of journalism. Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, SPJ works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.

The Greater Los Angeles professional chapter was chartered 25 years later in 1934. For more information about this chapter, visit http://spjla.org.

The Mark of Excellence and Sigma Delta Chi awards are open for entries. The MOE Awards honor the best in collegiate journalism, and the entry deadline is Jan. 25, 2012. Entries for SDX Awards, for professional journalists, are due by Feb. 9, 2012.

The awards cover online, print, radio and television journalism. To be eligible, work must have been published or broadcast in 2011. Both contests are open to non-members, although SPJ members receive a discount on the entry fee.

Please visit our awards site for more information, and enter online here.

Please direct questions about the contests to Lauren Rochester by emailing lrochester@spj.org.

The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, supported in part by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation and the Chicago Headline Club has taken hundreds of calls from journalists around the country with questions about ethical issues in reporting, editing, Internet-related items and more. Consider calling the toll-free line with your questions: 866-DILEMMA.

Perkins Coie Brown & Bain announces that the sixth edition of the Arizona Reporter’s Handbook on Media Law is now available.

Perkins Coie attorney Dan Barr led a team of 10 Perkins Coie attorneys in Phoenix and Seattle in revising the Handbook, which was last released in 2002. Topics covered include access to court proceedings, public records, open meetings, and public and private places. The new Handbook also addresses subpoenas issued against the news media, search warrants, gag orders, prior restraints, libel, invasion of privacy, promises of confidentiality to sources, copyright and trademark issues, and Section 230 immunity for online content.

The Arizona Reporter’s Handbook on Media Law is being sold for $5 a copy. To order a copy, please contact Sharon Neilson at 602-351-8014 or SNeilson@perkinscoie.com.

For more information, please contact Dan Barr at 602-351-8085.

The local ACLU chapter is very interested to hear about any concerns members of the media had about press freedom during the fires. If you are aware of any issues, please contact executive director Kevin Keenan or communications director Rebecca Rauber by noon Tuesday, Oct. 30. If you prefer to discuss the issue over the phone, you can call Rebecca at 619-922-0700.

I never knew what “don’t be stupid” meant when I went through wildfire training at the Register. Our required training covered all the basics of covering a wildfire, something I was assured I might cover – but something I never really thought I would.

Until Sunday night when I got the call of a 20-acre fire in the wildlife preserve north of Irvine, the city I cover. But over the last few days, the situation has become much worse – and I’ve been covering wildfires.

The main lesson I’ve learned through this is not to be stupid. I hope you all remember that. Yesterday while standing on Modjeska Grade Road up in the canyons of Orange County and a firefighter told me that the fire leaping over the road behind us was a sign that we should leave.

The reporter I was with thought we should stay until we could contact our editors and ask permission to leave. We couldn’t call out, though, with no reception.

Then I remembered those words “don’t be stupid.”

Even though I’d spent the whole morning driving around and trying to get to where the houses were on fire so I could describe it on our newspaper’s Web site, I knew it was time to leave.

And we did, and only about 15 minutes later did all of the firefighters pull out of that same area because it was not safe enough.

Just a big lesson I learned while covering the wildfires. Anyone else out there covering the blazes?

This here from SPJ’s NorCal Chapter:

OAKLAND – An array of Bay Area journalists, as well as highly respected media organizations and local university journalism departments, have formed an investigative team to continue the work of journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr., and answer questions regarding his death.  Bailey, the editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was murdered on Aug. 2 while reporting on a story regarding the suspicious activities of the Your Black Muslim Bakery.

In an unusual collaboration, more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors from print, broadcast and electronic media, and journalism students are launching the Chauncey Bailey Project – an investigative unit that will continue and expand on the reporting Bailey was pursuing when he was gunned down. Devaughndre Broussard, 19, a handyman for Your Black Muslim Bakery, has confessed to the crime, according to police, but many questions about the possible motive for the killing have yet to be answered.

“We cannot stand for a reporter to be murdered while working on behalf of the public. Chauncey’s death is a threat to democracy; journalists will not be intimidated,” said Dori J. Maynard, president and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. “This type of crime cast a chilling effect over our community. We will not be bullied.  We have to prove that there is no gain when the very structure of our society is challenged.”

Moreover, Maynard asserted that the “team will ensure that Chauncey did not die in vain.

“Other Bay Area media have covered the story and all work done on this story is important and continues to shed light on Bailey’s murder. We hope that our work contributes to understanding why Bailey was killed and addresses the broader ramifications of the story.”

The team effort promises to be the largest collective journalistic endeavor since the Arizona Project was formed 31 years ago in the aftermath of the murder of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles.  “This is a unique collaboration and we hope our work goes beyond Bailey’s murder and reveals broader issues that impact the lives of Oakland’s citizens,” said Robert J. Rosenthal, who is helping coordinate the project and is the former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and former Managing Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Journalists from the following organizations are working on the project:

Bay Area Black Journalists Association
Bay Area News Group
CBS 5
Center for Investigative Reporting
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.
KGO-AM
KQED Public Radio
KTVU-TV
Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
National Association of Black Journalists
New America Media
New Voices in Independent Journalism
San Francisco State University Journalism Department
San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Jose State University School of Journalism and Mass Communications

Sigma Delta Chi Foundation
Society of Professional Journalists – Northern California Chapter
University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism

“I’m happy that the Oakland Tribune, and our Bay Area News Group partners the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, are involved in this noble effort and extremely pleased that the Tribune has been able to take a lead role,” said Pete Wevurski, managing editor, BANG-EB and executive editor for the Oakland Tribune. “Chauncey Bailey was a colleague and friend to many of us and we want to honor his work and our profession by picking up the standard that fell the morning he was assassinated. I’m extremely gratified by the numbers and caliber of journalists who have joined this coalition, and I’m astounded by the work they are turning in already.”

The project, said Wevurski, “is essential to Oakland and essential to us as journalists who wish to emphasize the point that you can kill the messenger, but the message is still going to get through. Based on that alone, I believe this will be the most important work any of us have ever done and ever will do.”
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For more information about the Chauncey Bailey Project or its collaborators, contact Dori J. Maynard of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education at (510) 684-3071.