Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb has challenged Bay Area media to continue the work of slain editor Chauncey Bailey, according to a story posted on the KCBS Web site. Calling the murder “a moment of disaster for journalism, nationally and internationally,” Cobb added, “I hope this is an opportunity for us to continue the work he was doing and to step up.”

Cobb is right. Except it’s more than an opportunity. It’s a responsibility; a duty, even though the last time something similar occurred, both the effort and the result were highly controversial.

That was more than 30 years ago, following the 1976 car-bombing death of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who had been working on a story about mob activities in Arizona. In what became known as the Arizona Project, almost 40 journalists from some two dozen newspapers across the U.S. descended on Phoenix to finish the job started by Bolles. In 40 stories that ran in several newspapers over 23 days, they documented mafia influence at the highest levels of Arizona politics.

Nearly all of the reporters and editors involved in that effort were also members of a then-fledgling national organization called Investigative Reporters and Editors, as was Bolles himself. I joined IRE in 1978, and for the next several years, the Arizona Project remained a hotly debated subject at its national conferences — not to mention in U.S. journalism generally. While the Indianapolis Star, the Boston Globe and the Miami Herald published the story, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post would have anything to do with it. Even the Arizona Republic — Don Bolles’ employer — didn’t publish it (although 30 years later, it did publish a decent look back at the project).

Many journalists argued that it was “vigilante journalism,” and some even compared it’s “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us” message to a gang mentality. And the series certainly didn’t put an end to the mafia activity in Arizona.

Don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Anyone who would even consider killing a journalist on American soil in an attempt to kill whatever story on which he or she is reporting must understand that it won’t work.

Chauncey Bailey was working on a story about the Oakland-based “Your Black Muslim Bakery,” an organization with a history of trying to intimidate journalists through threats of violence. After the murder, Oakland police raided the bakery, arrested seven people and recovered a number of weapons. According to a story in the Oakland Tribune, one of those suspects confessed to killing Bailey, calling himself “a good soldier.”

Not good enough. If this is a war, then the soldiers must understand that you can’t kill a story by killing a journalist. Otherwise, the sword really does become mightier than the pen.

I challenge the Trib — which once employed Bailey and which recently abandoned downtown Oakland in favor of a suburban office tower for financial reasons — to answer Cobb’s call and prove its continued commitment to the community by throwing its diminishing resources at finishing what Bailey started.

In the process, we can find out whether “investigative reporting” at Dean Singleton’s Bay Area newspaper monopoly in the future is going to mean anything more than simply reporting leaks from sources within the police department.