Dong Puno back to his first love

You don’t realize how important something is to you until you lose it.

Lawyer Dong Puno knows this more than ever, now that he’s back in media after being away for two years which he spent as former president Joseph Estrada’s press secretary, and after that, as law practitioner.

He never felt so great as when he warmed his chair once more at the ABS-CBN studio, where he’s back, not as administrator (he used to head the News and Public Affairs Department), but as host of Dong Puno Nightly, a 30-minute current affairs show aired midnight, Monday to Friday.

"It felt so good!!" he exclaims.

Members of the press who met him for his media comeback felt Dong’s exuberance. Someone noted how he talked a "mile a minute," savoring his moment with the entertainment press whom he hasn’t talked to for a long time.

He swears his government stint has made him a better man.

"Going around the country and talking to everybody is the best education yet. I’m no longer as extreme as before, when I looked at things as either good or bad. Now, I look at the gray areas," says he.

Even for that, he has no regrets tossing his hat in the political arena, which he did, because "my services were needed."

As a government insider viewing media from the outside instead of the other way around, Dong learned more about the profession he is now making a grand comeback in.

Best of all, he found himself. "Media is where my heart is," Dong reveals.

He cut all political affiliations his government post gave him so he can become the objective media man he wants to be for keeps.

"They (the politicos) understood. It was an amicable parting of ways," relates Dong. This way, he is freed from political baggage that can get in the way of his mission in "illuminating and putting things in the proper perspective so people can think well." Dong sees himself as a "spokesman for everybody," as he tackles topics light and heavy, from politics to art and culture.

"I miss interviewing people," he says.

A dream subject is F. Sionil Jose. "Usually," Dong observes, "we don’t get to talk to national artists that much when they’re alive."

And because his show is 30 minutes, not an hour long as the now-defunct Dong Puno Live was, this Harvard graduate has the luxury of concentrating on his guests for the night, drawing out everything that needs to be drawn out.

"A one-hour show," he points out, "has too many guests you end up not being able to capture the substance of the interview."

Dong will conduct his new show in Filipino, the better to reach out to the CDE audience, whom he got to learn more during his stint with government.

Is he willing to assume an administrative post in ABS-CBN again? "I’m happy working as a talent," Dong flashes a wide smile. It is the smile of a man who has gone full circle; who has found his place under the sun, and who knows that never again will he stray from a field where he can make a big difference.