The Assassination of Chauncey Bailey

San Fransisco Chronicle: Journalist Chauncey Bailey infused black pride into his work for more than three decades, writing hundreds of stories about Oakland's African American community, developing relationships with the city's key players and hosting black cable television news shows.

When he landed the job as editor of the Oakland Post in June, the African American newspaper seemed the perfect fit for Bailey's signature outspoken and crusading style.

Then on Aug. 2, two weeks after he wrote a story about problems at Your Black Muslim Bakery - an organization once hailed as a symbol of black empowerment - Bailey was dead.

As he walked to work from his flat near Lake Merritt at 7:30 a.m., a walk he made every morning, a masked gunman walked up and shot him execution style.

Bailey, 57, became the first journalist assassinated in this country since 1993 - according to the Committee to Protect Journalists - his death the likely result of a chance encounter between two of his sources and a careless journalistic slip.