Publisher’s Note: The publisher has had no role in editing this column, which is published as the writer submitted it with the intention of publication in BEACONS.
By Esther Estrada
Lisa Falkenberg a wife, a mother of two daughters of the ages of 5 and 2. But she’s also a columnist at the Houston chronicle. She was born and raised in south Texas in Seguin, which is near San Antonio. Coming from a family of a truck driver and homemaker, she was the first in her family to attend college. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Journalism in 2000.
Falkenberg’s love for journalism all started in her high school newspaper and continue in college. While attending college, she worked at several state capitol bureaus, including Scripps Howard and The Associated Press. In 2001 she joined the AP’s Dallas bureau and eventually became a regional writer covering Dallas and East Texas. The stories she coved was the Columbia shuttle disaster, the deadly BP refinery explosion in texas city, and was anchored for national congressional and senate races. Some other awards in her career she had earned was in 2004 she was named Texas AP writer of the year, Herr coverage of a mother who severed her baby’s arms earned her first place for the news reporting award from the Association for Women Journalists Dallas- Fort Worth chapter in 2005.
Falkenberg award didn’t just end there. They continue even after joined the Huston Chronicle’s Austin bureau as a state correspondent covering everything from legislative politics to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In 2007 at the age of 28, she was named a Houston-Based metro columnist. She has also earned serval local and state journalism awards for her writing and was named the Chronicle’s Commentator of the year in 2009. The community on its own has recognized her for all her work on social issues such as Huston’s Coalition for the Homeless, The Houston Peace and Justice Center, and the local chapter of the Council of Jewish Women. For all that she has done and contributed to, she was a finalist in the Pulitzer commentary category in 2014. She was also a Pulitzer Prize Juror in 2017 for Editorial Writing.
When it comes down to Lisa Falkenberg’s voice in her writing, she sets a stern tone. With all the topics she covers, she makes sure she sets a professional manner through her writing. Somehow she manages to cover every question that could pop up in our mind as we are reading her columns. She does a great job at being very descriptive and makes sure there a clear picture as we are reading. She makes it very vivid, almost as if we, the readers, are in the same room as she, and she describes the vibes of the space she is covering, making everything feel very surreal. Something to noticed within all her columns which seems to be her signature style, is that she breaks everything down into subcategories. She doesn’t just tell the story straight forward, which tends to make things a little boring to read or even stay focused; she managed to keep everyone interested through her subcategories that flows correctly with the story she is covering. Doing this, too it helps answer or clear up any questions that pop-ups in our minds and this makes everything much better.
For 2014, Lisa Falkenberg wrote vividly groundbreaking columns about grand jury abuses that led to a wrongful conviction and uncovered other egregious problems in the legal and immigration systems. You can see she is a voice for the people and her community. Starting with the immigration systems, she wrote a coluome “Immigration order leaves some behind: For millions of people who have been living in shadows, the future looks a lot brighter,” that’s about a housemaid who came to clean her house every Saturday named Maria. This woman was characterized as friendly and hard-working and was simply just looking for some extra homes to clean up after because she was in desperate need of quitting her low-paying job of cleaning up after offices at night. The reason she wanted to leave this job was that she wanted to be home more often with her children to be able to help them with homework and spend time with them. This is something that most immigrated parents face, having to work double and make tons of sacrifices just to be able to provide for their kids. What Falkenberg did her was simply put a light on what many immigrated family faces when they are just trying to live a good life and show the reason why they came here in search of a better opportunity and energy for themselves and their children.
Something else Falkenberg shines a light on is how badly people get treated and some problems within the legal system. In her column, she wrote, “Determined voter wins battle for respect” This exposed a flaw in the legal system that we may have overlooked and just haven’t noticed or didn’t pay much attention to. However, she indeed did manage to catcher my attention to this problem that she exposed. In this article, she speaks about a woman named Laura Troth who was having a hard time trying to get a Texas voter ID to vote in person. Every time she had stepped into the Department of Public Safety building, they will come up with documents she was missing every time or tell her that the ones she has aren’t valid. After being tired of the back and forth she ended up calling DPS, Gov. Rick Perry, and state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston and gave them an earful of complain. Theyre resposned to her complain is where it showed the legal system has some flaws. They “encouraged Troth to vote by mail. No photo ID is required for that form of voting. "Answer me this," Troth told me, "If you have to have all this proof to vote in person, why can anybody just vote by mail?" The reason why they even has such law to have a voter id is to stop voter fraud but if you vote by mail you dont need any document or proof of anything that its you voting. So in other words voting fraud can still happen through mail and the legal system doesnt seem to make sense by just putting all these laws for inperson voting but not over the mail.
Falkenberg spoke about a court case that had many twists and turns to it and show how people emotions are while being at court. She has spoke about Alfred Dewayne Brown who was acussed for Charles R. Clark, a veteran Houston police officer, The store's clerk, Alfredia Jones and burglary. His alibi was that he was at his girlfriend house,Ericka Jean Dockery. Dockery was than later brought to trail and was charged with perjury for allegedly lying. They started to threanth her with taking away her kids and that was her breaking point and where she ended up switching her story either because it was true or because thats what the court systmen wanted to hear and had put pressure to make her switch her stories.This is something that should be happen to anyone and it just show even more how broken they legal system can be. Thank you to Falkenberg for always shining a light on problems thats seems to not be noticed and makes everyone become aware.
Lisa Falkenberg is a great columnist writer who is know for her vividly-written, groundbreaking columns about grand jury abuses that led to a wrongful conviction and uncovered other egregious problems in the legal and immigration systems. She always tends to espoused the truth and become the voice for her community. She doesnt make her work extra long either she gets right to the point and answers any questions to my her statements clear.
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