Gunman kills newspaper’s new editor

OAKLAND, Calif. – The outspoken new editor of the Oakland Post was shot to death Thursday near a downtown courthouse in what police suspect was a deliberate hit.

Chauncey Bailey, 57, was killed around 7:30 a.m., said Oakland police spokesman Roland Holmgren. Witnesses told police a man wearing a mask shot Bailey multiple times and then fled.

Police had no motive for the killing but said it did not appear to be random. Holmgren said investigators would look into any possible connections with Bailey’s work.

Bailey was a familiar fixture on the local news scene. He was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune for more than a decade before June, when he was named editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community.

Bailey grew up in Oakland and worked with several area media outlets, including KDIA radio and Soul Beat TV, a local cable channel. Before that, he worked for 10 years at the Detroit News.

Oakland Tribune managing editor Martin G. Reynolds called Bailey “a friend, a valued colleague and a loving father” whose coverage of Oakland’s black community was “a tremendous asset.” His death “has left all of us at the Oakland Tribune shocked and deeply saddened,” Reynolds said.