Michael Lindenberger, Pulitzer winner for Chronicle editorial section, dies in Kansas City

Michael Lindenberger, who brought Southern affectations and rigorous journalism during nearly 30 years of reporting and editing on floods, politics, poverty and social justice for newsrooms large and small — and helped the Houston Chronicle this year earn its second Pulitzer Prize — died over the weekend in Kansas City. Lindenberger, 51, the former Chronicle deputy opinion editor, was vice president and editorial page editor of the Kansas City Star. He was found early Monday after a welfare check by police at the behest of a friend. Recently, Lindenberger had been experiencing health issues and had been seeking a diagnosis for rapid weight loss and a loss of stamina. “Michael had a deep connection with people who were overlooked,” said his brother Hudson Lindenberger. “Just a deep streak for social justice.”

Lindenberger dined on ideas, making a meal of a well-reasoned argument built from scratch: original reporting that led to an established position and finished with rhetorical flair. “He deeply believed in the power of good information to triumph over bad, in journalism to illuminate problems and solutions and in finding common ground when it was tempting to only find fault,” said Lisa Falkenberg, the Chronicle’s vice president and editor of opinion. Prior to stints in Kansas City and Houston, Lindenberger was a member of the Dallas Morning News editorial board and before that was the paper’s Washington-based business reporter, among other roles over 14 years. He spent 2012-13 at Stanford University as a member of the Knight Journalism Fellowship, but never lost the rhythm and esprit de corps of working in small papers in Portland, Tenn., Jeffersonville, Ind., and Owensboro, Ky. He was a graduate of the University of Louisville and the school’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. It was in college where he honed his skills and decided to focus them on how journalism could speak for those often outside the corridors of power. While editor of his college paper, Lindenberger and two others drove overnight to cover the Million Man March in Washington, a nearly 10-hour drive. The experience was one of many he often cited as the power of the press, that informed his reporting and editing. "The work we do changes lives," he told the University of Louisville's alumni magazine this summer. "We change opinions, and that changes lives because it changes conditions in the state." During his three decades at various stops, Lindenberger wrote about families displaced by disaster, political influence and its effects on poverty relief in Kentucky, and the changing landscape of gay culture across the nation. His work reached its zenith, however, when he became an opinion writer. He won the Star Opinion Writer of the Year prize given by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors in 2020. He helped lead the Chronicle’s opinion coverage of the “Big Lie,” efforts to suppress voting in Texas. The series won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing.