Rate My Professor Thomas Peele

Thomas Peele is a continuing lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, a position he has held since 2007. He teaches courses on public records and investigative reporting, including J-298 Freedom of Information and J120 Introduction to Investigative Reporting, and leads a volunteer public records workshop for the school's Investigative Reporting Program. Peele instructs students in the "document state of mind," stressing the importance of starting investigations with public records to verify facts and expose government malfeasance. He earned a BA in journalism from Long Island University and an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco.

Award-winning investigative reporter with newspapers since 1983, Peele started at a small weekly in Bridgehampton, New York, worked at Newsday, and covered corruption, organized crime, casino gambling, and Donald Trump at the Atlantic City Press before moving to California in 2000 for the Contra Costa Times, later Bay Area News Group publications including the Mercury News and East Bay Times. His reporting on the Chauncey Bailey Project contributed to convicting all involved in the 2007 assassination of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey. The 2016 "944 Guns" series documented stolen police weapons, leading Governor Jerry Brown to sign storage legislation. Coverage of the 2016 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, revealing city inaction on code violations despite prior investigations, won the East Bay Times the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. The 2018 "Burned Out" investigation exposed fire department failures in school and apartment inspections, spurring reforms. Peele's book Killing the Messenger (Random House, 2012) chronicles the Black Muslim Bakery, radical faith, racism's backlash, and Bailey's murder. He has won over 60 awards, including the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage, two from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Columbia University's Paul Tobekin Award for race reporting, Scripps Howard, and American Society of Newspaper Editors honors. His work has driven policy changes and advanced accountability journalism.