Happy to be back: a journalist returns to an old love

A journalist returns to an old love
Happy to be back
By Shalom F. Mapagu

ON THE night of Jan. 16, 2001, 12 of the 23 senators sitting as judges in the impeachment trial of then president Joseph Estrada voted against opening a second envelope from a bank that was presented as evidence on the wealth of the beleaguered chief executive.
The editors and desk persons of the political tabloid Pinoy Times were closing the pages for the day, but, of course, when the dramatic voting happened, they had to change everything to banner the breaking news.  I was one of the editors of the now-defunct tabloid and I can still remember how we reacted to the unfolding events.
Somebody “grabbed” the images on TV: the sympathetic embrace Sen. Franklin Drilon gave Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. who resigned from the Senate presidency (although condi-tionally), the jig that Sen. Teresa Aquino Oreta did that brought her so much pain afterwards, Sen. Loren Legarda’s tears.
Somebody reworked the layout.  All of us agreed that only one headline would do:  SHAMELESS.  And of course, the story had to be written.
When we had done our work and gotten copies of the issue, one of our editors received a text message that 1,000 members of the religious group Couples for Christ had starting marching to the Edsa Shrine to protest the Senate’s decision.  We knew something big was happening but we could not see what the outcome would be.  We were living in the moment.
We rushed to the Edsa Shrine, bringing with us copies of  Pinoy Times and distributing these to the people who had started to trickle in.  The rest of what we witnessed there was history.

Rhythm of life
That event is one of the things that come to my mind when people ask me why I ever returned to the media.   Journalism had become the rhythm and routine of my life.  Not even four years in government service could make me forget the old habit of looking at unfolding events as stories to be told in a coherent, factual, and logical manner.
For 11 years, from 1990 to 2001, I worked in three newspapers.  I started my career in journalism with Malaya and stayed there for about eight years as reporter and then copy editor.  The editors there taught me how to write and edit.  Then I moved to The Manila Times (then owned by the Gokongweis).  The move opened up new opportunities, two of which were to handle the Metro section and to be involved in a book project on the 1998 elections.
When an angry Estrada put the pressure on the Gokongweis to sell the newspaper over the “unwitting ninong” story on IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Socieded Anonima), the Times staff members were scattered to the four winds and I ended up with Eugenia Apostol’s Pinoy Times, working with some of the former Times editors. I handled the opinion page and then worked as  city editor and closed the special page on the impeachment proceedings.
Pinoy Times’s editor-in-chief Chit Estella described the tabloid as an invasion of Estrada’s turf.  We wanted to communicate with Estrada’s masses.  We wanted them to, uh, get to know him better.  “His mansions, his mistresses, his money,” Mrs. Apostol once said. I would let the readers judge how Pinoy Times fared as a piece of journalism during those tumultuous times.  All I know is Pinoy Times helped expose a side of Estrada that the public needed and had the right to see.

Missing the audience
When Pinoy Times closed down on Dec. 31, 2001, I took a vacation from media.  Over a decade of my life had passed.  I was older.  Months later, I joined a consultancy as a communication worker servicing the Third Elementary Education Project of the Department of Education.  Great fun, I tell you.  I got to go to places I’d never thought I would see, places I did not get to visit as a Manila-based and -focused reporter. Abra, Apayao, Agusan del Sur, Benguet, Biliran, Capiz, Guimaras, Ifugao, Leyte, Mountain Province, Masbate, Southern Leyte, Negros Oriental, Agusan del Sur, Cotabato, and Zamboanga Sibugay.  These are some of the poorest provinces in the country but I never saw the people’s spirits impoverished.  Despite their flaws and shortcomings, I saw the communities’ resourcefulness, guts, dreams, warmth, their basic decency, and their hopes.
But since I was no longer in the media, I could not communicate to a larger audience what I had witnessed and learned.  That’s when I missed journalism—the rush to beat the deadline, to find the best angle for a story, and to finish it within the day.
I realized that my instincts as a journalist were still with me.  The years of experience and training had not faded.  I still had them.  I still wanted to use them.  So why not?   Remembering my first 11 years in the business, I also realized how lucky I was for having worked with the people I did.  They were some of the most dedicated, most competent, and courageous in the industry.  I would like to think that some of their wisdom had rubbed off on me.  They’re still around, which is good for journalism.  I’m proud to be back in this community of professionals.
I was also lucky that the Philippine Daily Inquirer was looking for a desk editor for its news service last October.  The Inquirer News Service (INS) edits the stories that it shares with its sister publications and processes some of the breaking news for its news website.  It’s hectic work, due to the sheer volume of stories needed by INS clients.  I like it.  I’m back in the daily grind and part of the assembly line that brings to the public what they need to know when they need to know it.  I have returned to the old rhythm that had defined my early days as a journalist.  I’m doing a job that I had been trained to do, by education and experience.  Nothing is more empowering than that.  I worked with the best and I continue to do so.
This is a part of my life I am glad to have regained. n

Shalom Mapagu says she’s back for good in the media.

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