We will not surrender our freedomsToday, Independence Day, we renew our pledge to serve the people, to continue speaking truth to power, and to guard and defend freedom of the press and of expression from all threats.Read More Covering the PandemicRead more Covering the CoViD-19 Pandemic Here We Go Again By Vergel O. Santos NOTE: The writer has himself adapted the following piece from a chapter (“A nation in denial”) in his book Chino and his times, a biography of Joaquin P. Roces. THE SPECTER of martial law is looming again. Rodrigo Duterte, a mere month into his presidency, mouthed... Beyond Janet Napoles WITH AROUND 400,000 protesters descending on the Luneta – not to mention others turning out in fair numbers elsewhere around the country and some parts abroad – Monday felt, positively, like another day of great unburdening. The feeling was unmistakable in the brightened faces and strong voices in the... No sympathy for whistleblowers IN SPITE of the potentially big push they could give the effort against the perpetual plague of official corruption, whistleblowersdon’t find any encouragement where it matters. For all its vociferous avowals on corruption, not even the present government is impressed. A national fantasy "POLITICAL MATURITY" is one of our great national hang-ups. We like wearing it for the same reason that a child given to fantasies of adulthood likes wearing Mom’s large, high-heeled shoes. The whole psychology may have developed from the one event in our recent history in which we shone, as... The hijacking of press freedom THANKS TO technology, press freedom is looking less and less like anything it’s been intended. Indeed, press freedom has been hijacked, to the extent that it now belongs more to non-journalists than to the professionals in whose suitably trained hands it is meant to rest, so that its responsible exercise... The continuing past (Updated) AT A lecture I gave recently to journalism students, the discussion, until now focused on the principles of news writing, was detoured by someone in the audience toward a grammatical subject – tense sequence. It is not a subject off too far, really. After all, news writing is storytelling,... Libel – a Sword of Damocles HERE ARE more excerpts from of the Q&A’s I’ve been having with students doing papers and theses on the news practice: Q. How do you think libel is abused in the country? A. It is used by news subjects actively, for harassment and intimidation, if not actually as a court case,... Corporate governance HERE AGAIN is one of those exchanges I find myself drawn to with students researching for academic papers and theses. This time it’s about my take as a newspaper publisher on corporate governance—that is, as I have defined it in answer to one of the questions here, "doing business... Part 2: The future of newspapers The shift from paper to paperless newspaper pre-requires acquiring the technical skills for composing and packaging the newspaper on the screen and refashioning it to make it suitable as well for watching and listening. Part 1: The fate of print… A whole new culture, nay, a whole new world is risen, and it’s a world that has no use for paper. 123…6Next »
