When Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey was fatally shot in broad daylight near his office, members of the local minority and journalism communities were shocked that someone wanted to silence his reportage. In the aftermath, more than 20 reporters, editors, Web producers and journalism educators formed a team to continue and expand the story he’d been pursuing.
Now, four years since his death, the work of the Chauncey Bailey Project arguably serves as a reminder of how journalists inform and educate the public. Among other things, project journalists uncovered sloppy police work in the investigation of the death of Bailey. The 57-year-old veteran journalist was investigating financial troubles of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a longtime Oakland business once known for economic self-empowerment, when he was shot on Aug. 2, 2007, while walking to work.
“The Project reminded us of our role as community watchdogs,” says Dori Maynard, chief executive officer of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and one of the project conveners. “We had to not only uncover who murdered Chauncey, but uncover the bad deeds he was investigating when he died. Thankfully, the mastermind was forced to face justice.”
In June, bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and getaway car driver Antoine Mackey were convicted in Bailey’s murder and now face sentencing. In exchange for a plea deal, bakery employee Devaughndre Broussard had confessed to shooting Bailey on the orders of Bey IV. According to trial testimony, Bey IV wanted to stop Bailey from publishing his findings.
Bailey, 57, had assumed the Post editorship only two months before his death, having written for organizations such as the Detroit News, United Press International and the Oakland Tribune.
“It’s not OK to kill a journalist,” Maynard says. “We couldn’t let that go unnoticed.”
She and others organized staff from several news outlets, nonprofit entities and college journalism departments, mostly in Northern California, into the project. Journalists who normally compete against each other instead collaborated on multi-media stories that published on not only a project website but also in local newspapers and aired on TV.
