++++++++++++++++++++
The Renaissance of Local News
When: Friday, January 27, 5:00 PM
Where: North Gate Hall
The inaugural event in honor of the Robert A. Peck Chair in Journalism at Berkeley.
Jim Brady – Journal Register Company’s Editor-in-Chief and Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media
Lydia Chavez – Professor and Robert A. Peck Chair at the Graduate School of Journalism and Editor-in-Chief of Mission Loc@l
Ken Doctor – Media industry analyst, author of Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get
Lisette Mejia – Master’s Candidate 2012, Graduate School of Journalism and reporter for Mission Loc@l
Chris Peck – Editor, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis
Seating is limited – RSVP required: juliehirano@berkeley.edu | 510.642.3394
Thomas Peele | Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism's Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist
When: Monday, February 13, 6:00 PM
Where: North Gate Hall Library
On the morning of August 2, 2007, journalist Chauncey Bailey, editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was gunned down in broad daylight and died.
Investigating police would soon uncover the motive behind Bailey's shocking murder: to stop a story. Bailey was working on an article about Your Black Muslim Bakery, an Oakland institution posing as a charitable organization but uncovered as a criminal and violent one. The Bakery was founded by a man named Joseph Stephens who later took the name Yusuf Ali Bey. Bey preached of Black Power and fundamental Black Muslim beliefs, while behind the scenes he led a violent cult. When he died in 2003, a bloody internal struggle ensued with Bey’s son, Yusuf Bey IV, eventually seizing control. Under Bey IV, the Bakery began to crumble and fell into bankruptcy. As Chauncey Bailey was investigating the Bakery and the Beys, Bey IV ordered his assassination.
Outraged by Bailey’s murder, a group of California journalists, known as The Chauncey Bailey Project, banded together to finish Bailey's work, help bring his assassins to justice, and prove that “you can't kill a story by killing the messenger.” Now, in KILLING THE MESSENGER: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism's Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist, Thomas Peele, an award-winning investigative reporter and member of The Chauncey Bailey Project, provides the first comprehensive narrative examination of Bailey's murder by bringing to light the astonishing series of events that led to his death.
KILLING THE MESSENGER explores the origins and history of the Black Muslim movement, the rise of Elijah Muhammad as a Muslim leader in Oakland and the separatist cult known as the Beys. Drawing from his research and the investigative reporting of The Chauncey Bailey Project, Peele weaves present-day events together with history to show how years of corruption, abuse, and propaganda resulted in one of the most shocking and gruesome attacks on a working journalist and the First Amendment in recent American history.
Books will be available for purchase.
Seating is limited – RSVP required: juliehirano@berkeley.edu | 510.642.3394
VALLEY OF SHADOWS & DREAMS: Reception and Book Signing
and Current Exhibition at the North Gate Hall Gallery (January 17-May 15, 2012)
When: Friday, March 16, 6:00 PM
Where: North Gate Hall Room 105
Photography by Ken Light | Text by Melanie Light | Forward by Thomas Steinbeck
“Valley of Shadows and Dreams explores a different California from the one that most people know—a California far from Hollywood and Malibu and San Francisco, a California that in some elemental respects has not changed much since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. The same sort of manual labor prevails in the fields, the same exploitation of the weakest and poorest still blights the land. In this book you will find a powerful indictment not only of what has happened lately in America's largest state, but also of what is happening across this country right now. The abuse of illegal immigrants, environmental degradation, the madness of a real estate bubble, and all the other problems of the Central Valley are unfortunately relevant nationwide. Ken and Melanie Light bring great compassion and an eye for beauty to this subject, facing hard truths but refusing to despair. As John Steinbeck argued more than seventy years ago, the demand for justice and the need for true democracy are timeless, essential things.”
—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
