The way we were
MANILA, Philippines — Months after the people power revolt in 1986, I applied for a job in the newest kid on the media block, a newspaper to be called The Philippine STAR.
Skeptics told us that the newspaper business was already crowded, with The STAR being the 23rd broadsheet, springing from the owners’ breakaway from another publication.
Yet we were all as optimistic as the mood in the country in those euphoric months following the miracle that brought down the Marcos dictatorship. Although latecomers in the industry, we believed quality journalism would carry the day.
As I filled out the application form, two founders of the paper sat close together behind a small table in a cramped room, vetting the applicants: board chair Betty Go-Belmonte and editorial board vice chair Art Borjal. Walking around the room was the editor-in-chief, Antonio V. Roces.
Not present was the publisher and star of The STAR, Max V. Soliven.
I didn’t know any of them, but I had previously worked under then managing editor Ricky Agcaoili, who must have vouched for me. I got the job, and was assigned to the judiciary, where I would later cover the retrial of the Aquino-Galman double murder case before being assigned to cover the presidency of Corazon Aquino.
For a year, the paper had only eight pages “from cover to cover,” did not accept advertisements and had no Sunday edition.
The office in Manila’s Port Area smelled of paper, ink and printing press grease. Typewriters and telephones were all around. Beside the editorial section was the “paste-up” where pages were corrected, with the words or letters rearranged using boxcutters and a ruler, and then pasted together manually for final proofreading before being sent to the printing presses.
I went to that office only for monthly editorial meetings with Tita Betty and to get my pay, in cash placed in brown envelopes. We either phoned in our stories from the field, or typed them and sent them by fax if the machines were available.
When I traveled on coverage, I lugged around with me my portable Underwood typewriter and a supply of bond paper and typewriter ribbon, unless we were assured of such supplies in a press office.
Our first issue was a scoop, written by our chief of police reporters, Alex Fernando – about an Aquino supporter who wore yellow and was beaten to death by Marcos supporters in Manila’s Rizal Park.
From that issue with the headline, “Wear yellow and die,” The STAR steadily soared, overtaking many of the older publications. My former journalism professor, Louie Beltran, would later leave the other paper co-founded by Max Soliven and Tita Betty, and join the roster of distinguished journalists writing for The STAR.
I was ecstatic when we pioneered color publication – with our first full-color photo that of the Tahitian island of Mururoa – from my coverage of the controversial French nuclear testing on that beautiful Pacific island. I became an expert in taking newspaper-quality, high-resolution photos on my Canon instamatic camera.
News presentation was becoming more visual, and we evolved with changing patterns of news consumption. We saw early on that readers were becoming unenthusiastic about lengthy stories. Features and special or investigative reports had to be broken up and published in segments.
There was never a dull moment in covering the tumultuous years of the first Aquino presidency. I often went to Malacañang with a change of clothes so that in case of a coup attempt, I would not have to leave the Palace and be barred from going back in.
When her “anointed” successor Fidel Ramos assumed power, he reached out to all the factions and things settled down. But peace is boring, so I moved to the desk after a few months, becoming the news editor and learning how to lay out the pages.
Shortly thereafter, the management decided to shift to computers. We held on to our typewriters as long as we could, until one day I arrived in the office with all the typewriters replaced by Mac desktops.
We had no choice but to get a crash course on computer use. Only one person could not be compelled to give up his typewriter: the publisher himself, Max Soliven. He never made the shift.
Gadgets were speeding up news coverage and publishing. Typesetting moved away from the paste-up to desktops.
But nothing changed with the demands of journalism: accuracy, fairness, concise words with no bias in presenting facts in a way that will keep people reading. Rigorous vetting of every line in every story, to ensure that only the truth would come out.
This remains the strength of print, a medium imbued with permanence and therefore with a high bar for full accountability for its content.
Biases were confined to the opinion pages – always a strength of The STAR. We joked that our op ed pages seemed to contain every bias that’s fit to print.
Max Soliven often reminded us junior journalists of the role of mass media in our fragile democracy: “to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable” was one of his favorite phrases.
In addition to efforts to inform, interpret events and let the truth prevail, we developed a brand that avoided sensationalism without being boring.
Amid the challenges of rebuilding the nation from the ruins of kleptocracy and dictatorship, and the effort to strengthen fragile freedoms, we also offered hope – that like truth, the nation will prevail.
