Colleagues and students of Lourdes “Chit" Estella-Simbulan remembered her as a gentle yet courageous journalist and teacher, as they came to pay their respects at her memorial service on Saturday.

Simbulan was killed after a taxi she was riding was rammed by a passenger bus on Commonwealth Avenue. The driver of the bus, which belongs to Universal Guiding Star Bus Line, is currently at large.



Hannah Dormido, a student of Simbulan, recalled that the professor and investigative journalist asked them to “ensure that once we got out of the university, we make a difference and leave a permanent mark."

“She was a good professor who knew what she was talking about because she was an experienced journalist," said GMA News’ Jam Sisante, who was also Simbulan's student.

According to Sisante, what made Simbulan stand out among other professors was her “gentle, almost-motherly attitude" toward her students.

The GMA News reporter said she will not forget how the professor guided her in making her thesis. “Even though she wasn’t my thesis adviser, she gave valuable advice to me and my partner because we were doing an investigative piece."

Simbulan was a full-time professor at UP College of Mass Communication for the last six years, and trained numerous professionals now working in mass media.

"She conveyed a strict sense of ethics," said Ellen Tordesillas, Simbulan's colleague at VERA Files, a news agency that produces investigative reports. "She was appalled by sources being generous to reporters."

Role in journalism crisis

Simbulan played a key role in one of Philippine journalism's gravest crises. In 1999, she resigned as managing editor of the Manila Times along with other editors after then-President Joseph Estrada filed a P101-M libel suit against the newspaper and the Times' publisher apologized on the front page.

Other Times editors decided to stay, including editor-in-chief Malou Mangahas and news editor Glenda Gloria, creating a division in their heralded generation of UP-educated journalists that continued for years.

Simbulan was a journalism graduate of UP Diliman and held a master’s degree in public management from the UP Open University.

A highly respected journalist and teacher, Simbulan started her career as a reporter of the Manila Evening Post in the early 1980s. She went on to work for Tempo, Ang Pahayagang Malaya, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

She was also a former editor of the Philippine Journalism Review Reports, which is published by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

She was married to Roland Simbulan, a well-known expert on Philippines-US security relations.

Simbulan will be cremated on Tuesday, according to Jam Sisante’s report on GMa News. — LBG, GMA News