Articles on Editor’s Killing Made a Difference

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When Chauncey Bailey, the editor of The Oakland Post, in California, was gunned down in broad daylight on a city street 18 months ago, it was not the end of his journalism. In some ways, it was a new beginning.

After his death, a group of reporters — some retired, some out of work — with support from foundations and the University of California, Berkeley, banded together to continue his investigation into a local business called Your Black Muslim Bakery and to look at any role the bakery may have played in Mr. Bailey’s murder and at the role of the police in its investigation.

The group, named The Chauncey Bailey Project, has had a deep impact on the city’s public life, revealing a jailhouse videotape that suggested a wider conspiracy in the murder and which the police seemingly ignored, and helping force the resignation of the Oakland police chief, Wayne Tucker.

The group has said that much of its work is done, but it says it will not shutter the operation completely until the investigation of Yusuf Bey IV, a son of the founder of the bakery, has been completed. Mr. Tucker suggested that an indictment was likely during a news conference after his resignation and that it would show a larger conspiracy in the murder of Mr. Bailey. Mr. Bey has denied culpability in the murder in an interview with one of the reporters on the project.

Rebecca Kaplan, a City Council member, publicly credited the group of reporters with airing the police’s dirty laundry.

“Even if everything was an honest mistake, the Chauncey Bailey case is shining a light on what we need to be looking at,” Ms. Kaplan said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23bailey.html?th&emc=th