A new adventure

Starting today, STAR readers may now listen to their favorite reporters and columnists whose stories and articles are being aired round-the-clock over DzRJ at 810 khz in your AM radio station. As added bonus, you may be able to listen to some of our more derring-do reporters who would be the ones to voice their reports on radio.

As print reporters, we consider ourselves as better read than heard. But this trailblazing partnership with RJ-AM, our staff reporters and provincial correspondents all over the Philippines would have another medium to serve the public with vital news and information to deliver them in real time and where they happen across the country.

This is made possible under the newly signed memorandum of agreement entered into by STAR president and chief executive officer Miguel G.Belmonte with businessman rocker Ramon “RJ” Jacinto. It is a content-sharing agreement between The Philippine Star Daily Inc. and the Rajah Broadcasting Network Inc. This strategic partnership was forged in simple signing rites held on Sept.23.  RJ-AM’s station manager Ramon Tuason and his wife Bea (RJ’s daughter) and yours truly stood as witnesses.

This is yet another pioneering venture by RJ in putting up the first and only all-English-AM radio station using the call sign The Voice of the Philippines. Aside from using the news content of The STAR, the RJ-AM station is also the local carrier radio station of The Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC).

“We will be transparent, objective and we will have it in international standards in giving out the news because even the BBC and The Voice of America are with us,” RJ vowed. “BBC told me once they are looking for a news organization that is transparent and really objective. That’s what it will be. We’re gonna be fair, be constructive and The Philippine STAR is that way,” RJ said.

While he may have business failings in the past, RJ believes that his latest pet project of tie-up with The STAR will not suffer the same fate. He cited the fact that the Belmonte family, as the majority owner of The STAR has shown their expertise on how to run a good business that can withstand challenges that come along the way.

RJ traced to us how on his own initiatives he was able to convince his late father — who was then engaged in steel mills industry — to pursue his own business. At a young age, he was already deep into rock guitar music and wanted to transform his dream into reality by having his own radio station to play the kind of music most people of his age then listened to.

While he was born with a silver spoon on his mouth, his father did not make it easy for him. His father required him to submit a feasibility study that included financial viability estimates. He submitted his business proposal for financing to the defunct Equitable Bank, one of the RJ family’s business empires called the Jacinto Group of Companies.

And since his business is putting up a new radio station, he needed congressional franchise before he can operate it. Fortunately for him, having Jacinto for a surname made it easy for him to secure a franchise from Congress. At 16 years, he said, he was the youngest lobbyist in Congress.

The DzRJ 810 AM itself has its shares of revolutionary episodes in Philippine media history in the same way The STAR started in July 1986. This was a few months after the February 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution when the late icon of Philippine democracy, former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino was swept into power.

As one of the many big business families persecuted during the martial law regime in our country, the young RJ then went on self-exile in Hawaii. The Jacinto Group of Companies was sequestered and managed by the government through the Department of National Defense then headed by now Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile.

Some of the “bright boys” of Enrile in the military ran the RJ companies, some of whom included then young officer and now Sen.Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan and Benjamin “Benjie” Defensor who would later become the Armed Forces chief-of-staff.

While he was reminiscing those days, I found out from RJ that he was actually my first employer. I was a fresh college graduate when I got recruited to join The Economic Monitor.  The defunct weekly business newspaper was one of the two media entities owned by the Jacinto Group of Companies and had its editorial office in the Jacinto Building in Sta.Mesa, Manila and where the DzRJ AM Tower was also located.

At the height of the four-day EDSA-1 Revolution, TV/radio personality June Kiethley did the broadcast clandestinely at DzRJ-AM Tower after the Radio Veritas was shut down on orders of the late President Ferdinand Marcos. To hide its identity, it changed their call sign to Radyo Bandido (rebel radio). It was RJ’s radio station that repeatedly aired the appeal of then Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin who asked the people to go to EDSA and support the group of Enrile and then PC-INP chief Fidel Ramos who were holed up in Camp Aguinaldo. This gave birth to the so-called peaceful People Power Revolution that restored democracy in the Philippines.

Twenty-five years later, we have now as President, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, Cory’s only son, and namesake of her late husband, former Sen.Benigno “Ninoy”Aquino Jr.

By the way, our own newspaper, The STAR  is turning 25 years old also and will celebrate its silver anniversary next year.

This latest publicity tie-up with RJ-AM also covers our philstar.com, our sister company in the internet website. Actually, this is the latest content-sharing partnership that The STAR  had entered into.  We have our first one with the TV network of the Lopez-owned ABS-CBN and this is still ongoing with them. We also have an informal tie-up with Yahoo Philippines that carry our stories and editorial content.

Obviously, The STAR  attracts so much interest not only from its loyal readers but many potential investors who always take a second look at our business advertisement “The only newspaper you read from cover to cover.” This is our new ad-venture.