This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 14, May 15-21, 2005
A Newsman's Tale: From
Shoeshine Even
as hundreds of media practitioners gathered May 3 to commemorate World Press
Freedom Day, a newspaperman in Pangasinan could not help but feel disheartened
by the closure of Sunstar Pangasinan, the only daily newspaper in the
Ilocos region. BY
JHONG DELA CRUZ
Dagupan City – Sunstar Pangasinan's
closure, which already circulated among local media groups early this year,
would leave jobless around 20 media workers including its manager, Philip Soria
III. A termination memorandum,
released by the Sunstar Board of Directors on March 24, indicated that the paper
is “losing” and that it must temporarily stop operation. The separation payments
shown in the memorandum are yet to be received by the outgoing staff, however. Humble beginnings Getting off from his
vintage 1982 model Mitsubishi car he calls kariton (cart), Sir Phil, as
Soria is known to many, gazed at the office that Sunstar occupied for
almost 10 years. He smiles sadly and begins
a tale no different from those of poor boys from the barrio (village). Soria grew up in the
pilgrimage town of Manaoag (170 kms north of Manila), conscious at a young age
to help in the household by selling Popsicle and ice candy after school. On
weekends, he sneaks out of the house with his father's shoe polish to clean
people’s shoes at the plaza in exchange for a small amount. During high school at the
town's public school, Soria found interest in writing, using his own
experiences to compose essays which he compiled in a journal. He moved to Dagupan City in
1976 to pursue college. It was the height of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial rule and
Soria witnessed the upheavals happening within and outside the local school. He
joined rallies and mobilizations that activist students in state colleges
organized. But this was to be cut
short when an older brother, an army graduate of the Philippine Military Academy
(PMA), encouraged him to follow his footsteps. He tried but Soria did not even
finish the first year. He left the PMA suffering from shock due to unbearable
hazing and congenital eye defect. Newspaper years After finishing college in
1981, he joined a handicraft factory back in Manaoag, forced by the need to
support his own family. After stints in public and
private sectors, he found himself manager of Sunstar in 2001 when the
newspaper reopened after a brief closure. Discontented workers and writers had
picketed the previous management over unpaid wages and benefits. The paper was like a
cripple, Soria said. It did not have its own printing press and had outmoded
computers and a disgruntled workforce. Employees said before Sir
Phil took over, they sometimes had as much as three months of unpaid salaries.
The circulation was down to such an unimaginable figure that they even refused
to recall the number. Soria seized back one of
the two printers from a disgruntled part-owner and started printing the first
colored pages of the paper. "By works of shall we say,
miracle, we survived," he said. Blows Surge in circulation
accompanied influx in local and corporate advertisements that same year. "It was a viable and
refreshing start. We combined all of our hard work with austerity measures such
as doing away with the caprices enjoyed by the previous management," he said.
"We started printing
colored front pages with our own printing press unlike before when it was used
to be printed outside," Soria said. Asked how the Sunstar's
board decided to close down the paper, he said "Honestly, I don't know." In a letter he received
from the board on March 24, the board said the newspaper subsidiary was “losing
money” and fewer advertisements. Soria said however that the
ill-fated newspaper had met problems with
the new management of the newspaper
group. "There were times
when we ran out of copies. We could only stare at the wall. Whenever we procure
materials, the management, based in Manila, has to approve the voucher," he
said. The more painful part in
the Sunstar closure was that 13 of its employees have nowhere to go. "The writers could move to
other newspapers, but the technical staff has nowhere else to go," he said. Faith in truth Sir Phil believes that the
lowly condition of media in the Philippines stems from a deeper problem of
society. "The media is vulnerable to
corruption yes," he said, "But not if they work in decent conditions that give
them more chances of survival.” Asked his opinion regarding
the killing of journalists, he said, "The agents of truth face the barrel of gun
because those who want to silence them fear they would be haunted by the
public's justice." The role of media, he said,
is to mirror the real conditions of the society, listening and narrating the
tales of the marginalized who are usually deprived of space in the mainstream
media. Proof of his bias with the
poor was when he refused a local personality's request to pull out an article
reporting the abuses against farmers displaced by the San Roque Multi-Purpose
dam. Meanwhile, Soria also runs
a wig factory, which employs out-of-school-youth, to help keep them off the
streets as well as away from the danger of child abuse. He dreams of putting up his
own newspaper someday, hoping to hire those who will be laid off by Sunstar
Pangasinan's closure. Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
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