JANUARY 2008
Posted February 15, 2008
Paul Cobb, Post Newspaper Group
THREATENED
Post Newspaper Group publisher Paul Cobb reported to Oakland Police a planned attempt on his life, according to a report by The Chauncey Bailey Project in the Contra Costa Times and other Bay area newspapers. Cobb, publisher of the Oakland Post and other local weeklies focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area’s black communities, told police that two men associated with the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery had offered a third man, a former employee of the bakery, money to set up Cobb to be killed. Cobb said he knew the man who, instead of accepting the money, informed Cobb of the murder plot.
Another former employee of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Devaughndre Broussard, has been charged with the August 2007 murder of Chauncey Bailey, then editor-in-chief of the Oakland Post and other weeklies published by the Post Newspaper Group. Bailey was killed by two shotgun blasts three blocks from his newspaper office. Bailey was investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery’s financial dealings at the time of his murder, according to CPJ sources.
An ad hoc coalition of Bay Area news organizations and journalists formed The Chauncey Bailey Project to continue the late newsman’s work and monitor law enforcement action about his murder. The report about the alleged plot to kill the late editor’s publisher, Paul Cobb, was reported by journalist members of The Chauncey Bailey Project and was published or broadcast by several Bay Area news outlets.