Thomas Peele, for EdSource

Thomas Peele is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter who specializes in accountability and public records reporting. Prior to joining EdSource in 2020, he was an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group for 20 years. His journalism career began at a small weekly newspaper on Long Island, NY, in 1983. Along with the Pulitzer for reporting on the 2017 Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland which killed 36 people, he’s won more than 100 journalism honors, including two Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, The McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage, a public service and investigative reporting award from the Education Writers Association and the Jack Bates Award For Distinguished Service to the California Press from the California Press Foundation. From 2007 to 2012, Peele was the lead reporter of The Chauncey Bailey Project, which investigated the 2007 killing of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey. The project’s work was widely credited for leading the prosecution and conviction of cult members who shot Bailey to stop publication of a story he was writing about them. Peele’s 2012 book about the case, “Killing The Messenger, A story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash And The Assassination Of A Journalist,” was called a “masterpiece of contemporary historical narrative.” Peele has a BA in journalism from Long Island University and an MA in writing from the University of San Francisco. He taught reporting at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism from 2007 to 2022 and has mentored hundreds of young journalists. Peele lives in the Bay Area with his family.