Guiller de Guzman (Inset photo by JUN CAMARILLO)
MANILA, Philippines — The Inquirer mourns the passing of one of its senior editors, Guillermino de Guzman, who died on April 3 at age 72.
A veteran of several major publications before joining the Inquirer, De Guzman belonged to a generation of journalists who skipped a formal college degree and went straight to the school of hard knocks that was the newsroom.
Starting out as a proofreader, he later became a reporter and rose to become an editor highly regarded by his peers.
It was a career that spanned decades, starting from the Marcos years, and saw him taking key newsroom positions in national publications such as Times Journal, The Daily Globe, The Philippines Free Press where he was managing editor for 17 years, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer where he served on the news desk for almost a decade.
During his stint at the Times Journal, he also wrote business stories and edited for several trade publications.
‘Passionate in copyediting’
Former Inquirer executive editor Jose Ma. Nolasco said of De Guzman: “I’ve never known an Inquirer desk man as passionate in copyediting as Guiller. He was our go-to person when it came to resolving disputes on English usage, idioms, grammar, and prepositions, knowledgeable as he was with dictionaries and stylebooks from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Associated Press, to The New York Times.”
He added: “Among members of the News Desk, he was the first to report for work and the last to leave the office before midnight. During his job interview, Guiller told me he preferred to work in a newspaper office as much as he can. He said he’d die if he just stayed at home.”
“A most gentle person, he wasn’t your usual curmudgeon of an editor. What a wonderful guy to have in the newsroom—up to the last moment of his life he was quietly but passionately helping put out the next day’s issue,” Nolasco also said.
De Guzman remained one of the experienced hands that the new set of homegrown editors, including Executive Editor Volt Contreras, was fortunate to have onboard.
“We are grateful for being among the journalists who, always appreciative of mentorship, have seen and learned from his work ethic, news judgment, and keen editing,” Contreras said.
Inquirer’s assistant business editor Corrie Salientes-Narisma, who first met de Guzman when they both covered the business beat, remembers him as “very silent, serious, but he was always willing to help on stories we were doing.”
“He was a serious and hardworking reporter,” said veteran journalist and Inquirer senior editor Adlai Noel Velasco, recalling De Guzman’s years on the beat.
‘Sharp and pitiless eye’
At the Free Press, De Guzman helped shape the insightful and often irreverent political content of the weekly magazine, together with then executive editor and now Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr.
He also wrote scholarly articles on Jesus Christ and the key personalities in his ministry (the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, and even Judas Iscariot), the background of the books that make up the New Testament, and other related topics reflecting his studies in the seminary before he became a journalist.
Locsin, in a tweet on Sunday, said: “Guiller de Guzman was my colleague in the publishing business in Globe and Today, pioneers in real journalism: elegant in the precision of facts and their presentation as news. He had a sharp and pitiless eye for grammatical howlers and idiomatic slips.”
In another tweet, he called de Guzman “my good friend who made me write clearer than I knew how.”
Grandfather
Veteran photojournalist Recto Mercene said in his tweet: “Saddened by news of Guiller’s death, a Times Journal colleague and my Free Press editor, RIP kapatid.”
In another tweet, Mercene described de Guzman as “my fellow traveler in all of those publications he edited.”
On Sunday, De Guzman’s eldest child, Rodrigo, said in a Facebook post: “ ‘I love you, son. I love you all!’ The last words of Papa on the phone before he passed.”
Rodrigo lamented that his father didn’t live long enough to see his first grandson.
“That was my dream for you,” he said.
In recent weeks, De Guzman often expressed pride in the newsroom that he was about to be a grandfather.
De Guzman was born on Nov. 7, 1948. He is survived by his wife Rosalyn and children Rodrigo and Rinaldo.