Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Announces 2009 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award Winner for Best Reporting of Racial Bias and Intolerance

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism has named the Chauncey Bailey Project the 2009 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award winner. The project was started to probe the 2007 assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was investigating a community empowerment enterprise called Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland, California. The Tobenkin Memorial Award is given annually by the Graduate School of Journalism to recognize courageous work on racial discrimination and intolerance.

The award, which carries a $1500 prize, will be presented on May 19 at the school’s Journalism Day Ceremony during commencement week at Columbia.

The project is a unique collaboration between nearly three dozen Bay Area news outlets, freelance journalists, journalism schools, local and national media organizations, and funders.  The Bailey Project has produced more than a 150 stories over the 20 months since the August 2007 murder.

The stories have appeared in dozens of San Francisco Bay Area news outlets such as the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, New America Media, KTVU-TV, CBS-5, ABC-7, KQED-FM, among others.  The stories are also distributed through the websites of the Center for Investigative Reporting (http://centerforinvestigativereporting.org/) and the Chauncey Bailey Project (www.chaunceybaileyproject.org).

As the series of stories unfolded, the Oakland police chief resigned and the lead police investigator was suspended for ignoring evidence against one of the murder suspects. State and federal law enforcement agencies are now investigating a conspiracy surrounding Bailey’s murder.

"The work, the results, and impact of the Bailey Project represent the value of investigative reporting to our democracy," said Robert J. Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting and executive editor of the project.

It is hard work, done by skilled and passionate journalists who believe they can make a difference in our society,” Rosenthal added. “The business of journalism is under assault, but the need and value of the journalism that is being eliminated has never been greater. The project, which is based on collaboration and trust, is a model for our transformational time.” 

Ernest Sotomayor, the Journalism School’s director of career services, who served as a Tobenkin judge, cited the project for “connecting the dots when no one else even saw the dots and when many in law enforcement didn’t even want to see if there were any dots.

”Some key breaks in the case occurred as the result of the work of three reporters: Thomas Peele of the Bay Area News Group-East Bay; Bob Butler, reporter for KCBS Radio; and Mary Fricker, a retired reporter from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Together, they uncovered past criminal activities involving members of the bakery going back as far as 40 years. In one case, their reporting prompted the Santa Barbara Police Department to re-open a 1968 double homicide investigation.

The project was cited by the award judges for effecting change. “This was not your typical white people against people of color story,” said Sotomayor, who is also the former president of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc. “It showed the terror that people of one race perpetuate against their own kind, and that is as vile as what the KKK and the Minutemen do to black people and to immigrants along the border.”

The project continues its investigations under the coordination of the three Bay Area organizations that first convened the entire group: New America Media, headed by Sandy Close; the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, directed by Dori Maynard; and the Oakland Tribune, under Editor Martin Reynolds.

Chauncey Bailey would have been thrilled to be part of this project,” said Sandy Close. “Chauncey used to say that ethnic media were like fingers on a hand--when they worked together, they made a fist. I think about the surge of news organizations, normally competitive with each other, that came together to respond collectively to his death and the threat it posed to free expression, and I see the future of journalism. Hats off to UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism; Sigma Delta Chi Foundation; The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism; National Association of Black Journalists; Newspaper Guild; and The California Endowment for funding this historic initiative.”

At a time when quality journalism is in doubt, and we expend too much energy mourning what was, the Chauncey Bailey Project is an unprecedented collaboration that can stand as a model of what can be,” said Dori Maynard. “We are lucky to have had such strong support from the philanthropic and journalism communities.”

The partners in the Chauncey Bailey Project are: Bay Area Black Journalists Association; Bay Area News Group-East Bay (which includes the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News); The California Endowment; CBS-5; Center for Investigative Reporting; Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.; G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism (formerly New Voices in Independent Journalism); The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; KGO-AM; KGO-TV-ABC 7; KQED-FM; KTVU-TV; Maynard Institute for Journalism Education; National Association of Black Journalists; New America Media; San Francisco Bay Guardian; San Francisco State University Journalism Department; Sigma Delta Chi Foundation; Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California Chapter; UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. 

Past awards highlighted the work of the Denver Post, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Reporter for upholding the standards of excellence on racial and ethnic reporting that exposed discrimination and challenged the status quo.

About the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award

The Tobenkin Award, founded in 1959, during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, to honor the former New York Herald Tribune labor reporter Paul Tobenkin, is given to work that is innovative and courageous in its scope. Judge Lisa Redd, a former Newsday reporter who now serves as prize director at the school, said the Bailey Project “serves as a reminder to other media companies and journalists that our mission to do public service is an inestimable one.”

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

For almost a century, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has been preparing journalists in a program that stresses academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry, and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer in 1903, the school offers Master of Science, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. For more information on the Graduate School of Journalism, visit www.jrn.columbia.edu.

Columbia University

A leading academic and research university, Columbia continually seeks to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to foster a campus community deeply engaged in understanding and addressing the complex issues of our time.Columbia’s extensive cultural collaborations and community partnerships help define the University’s underlying values and mission to educate students to be both leading scholars and informed, engaged citizens. Founded in 1754 as King’s College, Columbia University in the City of New York is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. For more information about Columbia, visit www.columbia.edu.