OAKLAND — When a masked man fired three shotgun blasts into Chauncey Bailey in August as the newspaper editor walked to work, the slaying sent a powerful tremor through Bay Area journalism circles.
Mary Fricker, a longtime business reporter for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, was about a year into retirement when she got word.
Lisa Pickoff-White was driving cross-country to start her journalism studies at UC Berkeley.
And Bob Butler, a member of the National Assn. of Black Journalists' board, was freelancing after nearly three decades of reporting for radio stations.
All later joined the Chauncey Bailey Project -- a collaboration of dozens of journalists from newspapers, broadcast stations, universities and nonprofit groups who came together with a shared determination to not let the black community newspaper editor's slaying stop his work.
At the time of his death, Bailey had been looking into Your Black Muslim Bakery, a politically connected group that once epitomized black economic empowerment in Oakland but has been buffeted by financial problems, infighting and allegations of sexual abuse and violence.
Police believe that Bailey was killed over his coverage of the bakery, and project members have probed deeply into the organization's history.
Recently, the project reported that its inquiries had prompted Santa Barbara police to reopen an investigation into the unsolved 1968 slayings of a couple who belonged to a mosque that was a forerunner of the bakery.
The Bailey Project is believed to be the first broad-based effort in more than 30 years to pursue the work of a journalist killed in this country, according to the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.
"You have to let the community know you can't kill a story by killing a reporter. You're going to bring the press down on you like gangbusters," said Fricker, who has been working on the project four days a week while living in a bedroom above a friend's garage.
Although Bailey received one of U.S. journalism's most prestigious awards after his death, he was working outside the mainstream when he was killed. And the 57-year-old editor of the Oakland Post -- a free weekly with a circulation of 50,000 -- did not fit neatly into the mold of a classic investigative reporter. He had been fired two years earlier from the Oakland Tribune for undisclosed ethical lapses.
Still, colleagues say Bailey, notebook constantly in hand, passionately covered his home turf. Though they say he had an in-your-face manner that put off some city officials, he could blend sensitivity with outrage, as he did in an article in the San Francisco-based Sun Reporter newspaper, lamenting Oakland's black-on-black homicide toll in 2002 and profiling a 19-year-old who was shot on Bailey's own block.
"Chauncey was very well known; he was synonymous with Oakland," said Tribune Managing Editor Martin Reynolds, who was Bailey's editor and friend. "Some liked him and some not. Some thought he was a crackpot, and some people liked what he did. He was a great guy who brought great value to the Tribune."
Your Black Muslim Bakery was also very well known in this rough-edged port city of about 400,000 residents. Housed in a red brick building, the bakery sold pies and breads through outlets around Northern California. It hired young people and former convicts who needed a break.
Its charismatic founder, Yusuf Ali Bey, once ran for mayor and was a fixture in Oakland until he died of cancer in 2003 while facing rape charges. After his death, factions of his extended family wrestled for control of the bakery's enterprises.
Now Bailey's slaying stands as the latest violence allegedly linked to the bakery.
Police say 20-year-old bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard confessed that he killed Bailey over his coverage of the organization, which is not part of the Nation of Islam. A judge ordered him to stand trial even after Broussard recanted, with his attorney saying the bakery's current leader, Yusuf Bey IV, had pressured Broussard to take the fall.
Bey, who is charged with kidnapping and torturing a woman in an unrelated incident, has denied involvement in Bailey's death.
In the last three decades, 13 journalists have been killed in this country, according to Frank Smyth of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Bailey, father of a teenage boy, was the first since 1993.
The Bailey Project has produced numerous stories about the bakery, some concerning the arrest record of its leader, its bankruptcy filing and real estate dealings, and the police response to past incidents involving members.
Although more high-tech and multimedia-oriented, the effort is reminiscent of the Arizona Project after the 1976 killing of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, whose car was blown up in Phoenix. Investigative Reporters and Editors sponsored a probe by reporters from across the country that yielded a 23-part series on Arizona corruption.
