McGill Medal Awarded to Thomas Peele and Mary Fricker

A ceremony was held Wednesday, March 24 for the McGill Medal awarded to four journalists who worked on the Chauncey Bailey Project. They were honored for their "journalistic courage." Two of the journalists were Thomas Peele and Mary Fricker.

Thomas Peele is a native of New York and now resides in California. He currently works for The Oakland Tribune/Bay Area News Group. Peele attended Long Island University and received his MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco. Peele has worked in several states across the nation and has over 20 years of experience. In those 20 years, Peele has accumulated a number of awards for his journalistic accomplishments. Some of these include 4 national reporting awards, the 2007 Investigative Reporters and Editors' Renner Award for his work in the Chauncey Bailey Project, and now the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. He still claims that his most difficult, interesting and important case was the Chauncey Bailey Project due to the large amount of flawed information and police evidence that he and his team were able to untangle and ultimately solve a mystery and a murder.

The second medal recipient is Mary Fricker. Fricker is a California native. She was an independent reporter retiring in 2006 from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where she covered business. She wrote a New York Times best-selling book Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans. Other accomplishments include the UCLA Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award and now the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. Her intense passion for reporting is evident in the fact that she came out of retirement to volunteer countless hours of her time to the Chauncey Bailey Project.

Both Fricker's and Peele's efforts were greatly influential in the Chauncey Bailey Project and its success.