YONIP.COM, “The Philippine Peace and Sovereignty Website,” has created The Online Chit Estella Reader to keep alive the “spirit, memory and legacy” of journalist Lourdes “Chit” Estella who died in a car accident on May 13, 2011.
Simbulan used “Chit Estella” as her byline.
The reader is a compilation of articles Simbulan had written on a range of issues, from human rights and media to conditions of the people and national concerns, for various publications–Ang Pahayagang Malaya, Manila Times, Pinoy Times, PJR Reports, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and VERA Files, which she co-founded. It also features profiles Simbulan had penned of prominent people, including President Benigno Aquino III and former president Fidel V. Ramos.
A graduate of journalism from UP Diliman and holder of a master’s degree in public management from the UP Open University, Simbulan started her journalistic career as a reporter of the Manila Evening Post in the early 1980s. She joined Tempo and later Ang Pahayagang Malaya where she was a senior reporter.
She spent a short stint at the news desk of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1994 before she moved to Manila Times to become its managing editor. She was editor in chief ofPinoy Times, the Filipino-language tabloid that put out stories on the excesses of then president Joseph Estrada. Simbulan was also former editor of the Philippine Journalism Review Reports.
At the time of her death, she was a professor of journalism of the University of the Philippines and trustee of VERA Files.
The reader can be accessed here.
