Journey of a lifetime

JAVELLANA: “Being an Inquirer is a mission, a calling.”

(Excerpts from the speech of associate publisher and 30-year service awardee Juliet Labog-Javellana at the Inquirer Service Awards on Nov. 19 at Aruga, Rockwell, Makati.

We were the typewriter generation, most of us wide-eyed new graduates when we entered the Inquirer in 1989, and from then on witnessed the steady transition of work processes from no-tech to high-tech.

We saw the paper move offices five times, each place better than before. From a shared space in Port Area to a dingy restaurant in Mandaluyong, Edsa, we moved to BF Condominium in a seedy neighborhood in Intramuros, and then to a warehouse on UN Avenue, best remembered for the rumbling sound of trailer trucks passing by. Finally, in 1995, we moved to our permanent home on Chino Roces, with its iconic spiral staircase.

Working in the newsroom meant competing with the sound of typewriter keys and reporters dictating their stories from their beats via a rotary phone. Just to make sure our editorial assistant got names right, we would spell them out in phonetic alphabet: whiskey, tango, foxtrot, echo, sierra, next paragraph. Photographers out of town meanwhile had to send their film rolls through bus drivers or flight attendants to make it to the newsroom.

Instead of computers automatically laying out text on blank pages, strippers—not the exhibitionist kind—had to cut and paste the text on blank pages line by line, sometimes letter by letter.

Though that would be unthinkable in today’s era of smartphones and satellite transmissions, there was one advantage: we had plenty of facetime with editors and with each other. Since laptops had yet to be invented and email was still unheard of, reporters had to “go to base,” that is, report to the Inquirer office where we typed out our stories.

OLD HAUNT The Inquirer held office at the Banco Filipino condominium building on Intramuros until the 1990 quake forced it to seek safer quarters.

There was instant mentoring, as editors sometimes hovered as you typed your masterpiece for the day. There was bonding too. On paydays, we splurged on drinks with editors at the National Press Club, or at Shakey’s on UN Avenue corner Taft. One night, some reporters and myself sneaked into Casino Filipino on UN Avenue, only to bump into an equally embarrassed senior editor inside.

Today, ads are sent via email and documents shared on Google docs. But in those days, account executives (AEs) for the classifieds had to personally pick up line ads from clients, even those that paid less than P500. The AE for the obituary page, Aileen Garcia made funeral parlors her regular hangout where she would copy the names of the deceased, seek out their families and offer condolences, followed by a sales pitch for obit space. “Nakikiramay po. Gusto n’yo pong magpa-obit?” went her usual line.

A HOME OF ITS OWN The Inquirer’s Makati office soon became a landmark on Chino Roces Avenue.

For the next three decades, we updated our gadgets as we continuously improved our reporting skills. First there was Easy Call, where one-way messages to “call office” had us getting off buses in the middle of Edsa and looking for a pay phone. Next came the bulky and heavy anagram phones, then Palm Pilots, two-way radios, the first laptops and the Wi-Fi stick. Now our reporters have Macbooks, iPhones and unlidata.

But it wasn’t just the carte blanche training and techie gadgets that made us stay. For many of us, Inquirer became a second home where we could call our immediate superior Mader or Tita, and company officials by their first name. It was at the Inquirer that Lifestyle staffer Vangie Baga started her own family—after she met and married Sports reporter Mark Reyes.

For 30 years, we stayed on because being an Inquirer is a mission, a calling. Covering coups, revolutions, wars, calamities, the high and low moments in our country’s history took us to the frontlines and helped us write the stories that matter. Our job took us to places we could only dream of—the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace, even the Vatican where we met the Pope.

But we’ve had our share of risky assignments as well. I survived Mt. Pinatubo, and later the coverage of Spratlys where the Chinese Navy blocked and intimidated our warship. I was covering the Palace when President Joseph Estrada banned the Inquirer from covering him, and instigated an ad boycott of the paper.

GOOD TIMES LJM and Apostol after being named among Time Magazine’s Asian Heroes in 2006.

Then reporter Christine Avendaño ended up becoming the story while covering the Pinatubo aftermath and got stuck in sinking lahar somewhere in Pampanga. The photo of her waist-deep in lahar became an Inquirer in-house ad titled “Come hell or high water,” we cover the news.

And so the Inquirer story—how the new kid on the block that reported the truth in a landscape of martial law repression became the chronicler of the nation’s yearning for freedom that culminated in the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution—lives on.

Its brand of fiery, courageous journalism—nurtured by our founder Eggie Duran Apostol and our longtime editor in chief Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc—today finds a bigger audience.

From being a print-only outlet, the Inquirer became the first in the country to launch a news website. From 30,000 copies when Inquirer first went into circulation, the Inquirer Group now has an audience of 57 million through its print, online broadcast and social media platforms.

LOOKING ADVERSITY IN THE EYE Inquirer founding chair Eggie Duran Apostol and editor in chief Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc (LJM) defined the paper’s feisty and courageous kind of journalism.

Like most journeys, travelling companions make a difference and can often determine whether the trip would be a breeze or an interminable and rocky sojourn. Fortunately, the Inquirer owners—the Rufino-Prietos—have always been there through the biggest challenges we faced as the leading broadsheet. During the Estrada ad boycott, MRP and SPR stood by the Inquirer and refused to sell the paper even under a “name your price” proposition. They also weathered pressures from the Arroyo administration.

When Inquirer got in the crosshairs of the Duterte administration shortly after the 2016 elections, the family again had to pay the price for the Inquirer’s independent and courageous journalism.

And so we learned in our journey of a lifetime that all of us make the Inquirer strong. We thrive because we are passionate about our mission for our readers—to empower the Filipinos with the truth and the information that matter to them. Though we face adversity, the weight of our mission is greater than the sum of our fears.

Let me close with a bit of trivia: there’s this big, round wooden table at the center of the newsroom on the third floor of our Makati office. It used to be a dining table at Madrid Restaurant in Edsa, Mandaluyong, which was the Inquirer’s second home. This table was a silent witness to the numerous scoops planned and crises discussed by LJM and our top editors. It has stayed with us through our transfer to different offices over three decades and now sits in the newsroom, used for dining and for meetings.

For us, this table is much like the Inquirer: strong, solid, enduring. Like this piece of furniture, the Inquirer is here to stay.

NIGHTS ON THE ROUND TABLE Inquirer editors from the early ’90s met and discussed the next day’s headlines on a round dining table (bottom) that followed the paper through three decades of transfer into several offices.