After Bailey's Murder, Black Journalists Encouraged To 'Step Up'
by Hazel Trice Edney
WASHINGTON - The publisher of the Oakland Post is issuing a call to arms to Black newspapers after the assassination-style murder of his paper's editor, Chauncey Bailey.
''If you don't cover something that needs to be covered just because you're afraid for your life, you don't need to be in the business. If you know there's wrong doing and you sit idly by; then who are you? If we turn the other way, we shirk our responsibility,'' says Paul Cobb, who says he too has received hate mail as publisher of the Post.
Oakland police said Devaughndre Broussard, a handyman at Your Black Muslim Bakery told police that he killed Bailey because he was angry over stories the journalist had written about the business and its employees and about future stories he might be working on.
Broussard was booked on murder and weapons charges and currently being held without bond, he allegedly was on probation for a San Francisco burglary.
In the past four years since Bailey was hired, the Post had received numerous ''threats of violence,'' Cobb says. ''He and I both have received hate mail.''
''His sacred cow was equity, fairness, openness of government, just general principles of decency,'' Cobb said of Bailey. ''Chauncey was a champion cheerleader for the Black community and self-help groups.''
It was apparently Bailey's fearlessness in his writing and his speaking on radio and television that caused the paper to flourish in the community. Cobb said the circulation skyrocked from 5,000 when Bailey was first hired four years ago up to its current audited and verified circulation of 60,000. That's a 1,100 percent increase in less than five years.
Just two months ago, Bailey was promoted to editor-in-chief of all the Post Newspapers - Oakland, Berkeley Tri-City, Richmond, San Francisco and South County.