Journalist and Palanca awardee Lina Sagaral-Reyes dies

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines – Journalist and 1987 Palanca awardee for literature Lina Sagaral-Reyes passed away at the age of 63 on Saturday, December 14, leaving behind a legacy marked by fearless reporting, a commitment to truth, and a dedication to the marginalized.

She died at the state-run Northern Mindanao Medical Center in Cagayan de Oro, where she was rushed two days earlier due to breathing difficulties. She was undernourished, her blood pressure was low, and her sugar levels surged.

Once a correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, she was a fixture in Mindanao journalism — respected not only for her hard-hitting investigations but also for her understanding of the intersections between gender, the environment, and mental health.

Reyes, a distinguished journalist, poet, and passionate advocate for social justice, was one of the senior staff members of the now-defunct Sunstar Cagayan de Oro in the late 1990s. She had also contributed features and investigative reports for the Mindanao Gold Star Daily.

Her investigations were widely recognized. In 1998, she exposed the environmental damage caused by sand dredging in Cagayan de Oro, a story that led to her receiving the prestigious Jaime V. Ongpin Award for Investigative Journalism. 

In 2000, her investigative work into the environmental hazards posed by an algal bloom in Macajalar Bay earned her the National Science and Technology Journalism grand prize. 

Four years ago, she took on the corporate world with an investigative piece exposing questionable environmental claims made by large pineapple farms, further cementing her reputation as a fearless reporter unafraid to challenge powerful interests.

Beyond the awards and accolades, however, it was Reyes’ commitment to those whose voices were often ignored that defined her work. 

She was an advocate for women’s rights, consistently raising awareness of the issues affecting women and marginalized communities, and she pushed for greater access to mental health services across the country.

She spent the remaining years of her life serving as a director of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club’s Journalism Institute, where she helped shape the careers of young journalists, tirelessly pushing for better standards and more collaborative efforts across the media community.

Reyes was among those responsible for amending the 2001 Code of Ethics of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club in November in view of the changing media landscape and the rise of social media and artificial intelligence.

Her contributions were not confined to journalism and the newsroom. A poet whose work explored the complexities of the human experience, Reyes was awarded first place in the Palanca Awards for Literature in 1987 for her poem Tree without Leaves.

The poem, with its raw meditation on loss and resilience, spoke to the inner strength that marked her own life.

The following is the poem that earned her a Palanca:

Tree Without Leaves

How your leaving unleafed me.

Wide wide lakes of leaves,
The crackle of breaking
Underfoot.

Memory became a bare crown
Of boughs as taut as the dark-eyed
Nipples of women
Facing the honest mirror of fears.

“You have strength I can’t name,”
Once you told me.

Now you must
Know: as winds churn
The leaf-lakes below,
I stand
Rooting with the power
You knew

and named Nameless.

On the rough nodes of my evening
Fireflies nestle,
Blooming.

– Rappler.com