Long Island University announced today that Chauncey Bailey, who was gunned down last August while in the midst of investigating a Muslim bakery, will posthumously receive the George Polk Award for Local Reporting. “In a career spanning more than 30 years, Bailey earned a reputation as a tireless, hard-nosed journalist who was dedicated to addressing the concerns of black communities in California’s Bay Area,” the university said in announcing the award.

Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb told Josh Richman of the Oakland Tribune that the award is deserved “because Chauncey is now universally known as one of the hardest-working journalists … because of the sheer volume of the work he produced, the fact that he was writing for three or four newspapers at the same time while producing his own television show and writing a movie. . . . He lived and breathed journalism. Ironically, he was killed for a story he never wrote … and he’s now being honored for the stories he did write.”