When a new newspaper hit the stands in 1985, Clarita Lirios and her husband, Rodolfo, then the trusty bicycle-riding newsboy of Bel-Air, decided to take a gamble and bring it to Makati City’s exclusive subdivisions.
Down south in Davao City, Nelia Partoza heard about an intrepid new newspaper that was launched despite the repressive martial law regime. Without thinking twice, she took on the new paper, which fit right into her advocacy of promoting the alternative press, her way of countering government-managed information.
From handing out just a few copies to clients who had also heard of the new newspaper by word of mouth, Lirios and Partoza are now among the largest dealers of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Inquirer Group’s flagship newspaper that has become the Philippines’ most widely read broadsheet.
With the surge of increasingly digitized media, the distributors are one in dispelling the naysayers: The newspaper business is very much alive, still with a steadily increasing number of people who make reading newspapers part of their day.
“We used to handle 500 to 600 copies a day. Now, on weekdays, we handle 1,000 copies,” Lirios, 68, said in an interview at the Inquirer circulation hub in Port Area, Manila.
Going back to print
Lirios spoke about how one government agency recently asked to resume its subscription after doing away with the newspaper and relying solely on the Inquirer’s digital edition for a time.
“The DOE (Department of Energy) cut their subscription by 50 copies because they shifted to digital. But they told me that they would subscribe [to the print edition] again because the employees had a hard time reading online,” Lirios said.
She smoothed out the copy of Monday’s paper in front of her, as if straightening the wrinkles off a prized garment.
“More subscribers still prefer the paper,” she said.
“For them to read a story again [on the digital edition], they have to go online, again. They said [doing] it strained their eyes. That’s what the employees complain about, so they want to go back to the paper version,” she said.
200 dealers
The Inquirer relies on its more than 200 dealers across the country to bring the newspaper from the printing press to homes and offices in time for morning coffee every day, even through holidays and less than friendly weather.
In the words of Inquirer editor in chief Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, the dealers serve as a conduit of excellence, bringing the paper from the newsroom to the readers.
“We may have the best journalists getting the stories first and writing them better with world-class photojournalists illustrating our content but if we are not circulated by you, our dear dealers, in the Visayas, Mindanao and Luzon, who would have ever known about the excellence of the Inquirer as the country’s favorite news provider?” Magsanoc said in a message to the dealers.
For Marixi R. Prieto, Inquirer chair, the dealers’ commitment to timely news delivery has been instrumental in the newspaper’s goal of realizing its journalistic mission.
“As you may know, 2014 has brought many challenges to our industry but still we’ve delivered the news, being the first, fair and fearless to our fellow Filipinos. You’re one of the reasons why we are able to meet our audience’s expectations. The visibility and awareness of our broadsheet are the keys to the success of our organization,” she said in a Christmas message.
According to Lirios, delivering the newspaper door to door is a tedious, round-the-clock job. Work begins at 4 a.m. at the Inquirer’s distribution point at Ayala Center in Makati City, with newsboys and carriers gathering hundreds of copies of the paper’s sections and putting them together, packing them in plastic bags during bad weather. Then they fan out to deliver the paper.
Labor of love
It’s a daily labor of love for the Lirios family, which, while the modest matriarch would not admit it, has grown and prospered since the time her husband began distributing just 50 copies of various titles in Makati villages on his bike three decades ago.
Rudy P. Lirios Home and Office Delivery Services, named after the now 77-year-old Rodolfo, is a million-peso annual subscription contractor for Philippine National Bank, and is also the dealer of choice for government offices across Metro Manila and exclusive villages in Makati.
The family firm has 15 motorbike-riding and four bicycle-riding distributors making the rounds each morning, making sure the paper is on the porch or in the office lobby at first light.
“[The business] is even better now. There are even more subscribers. We were able to raise our children and we got them to finish school because of newspapers,” Lirios said, referring to her four daughters who have their own families now.
Newspaper dealership has become such a part of the Lirioses’ life that it now runs in the blood: Daughter Flocer works as driver and collector, her sister Maria Teresa Asir is secretary, while a third sister, Ester Viernes, dispatches the newsboys, including her husband, Casimiro.
Of the Lirios daughters, only Annilyn chose to work elsewhere.
Even the family’s third generation is now involved, Lirios said. She hires her college-age grandchildren to deliver newspapers in their community for P150 a day.
“They have time in the morning. At least they have a school allowance,” she said.
And from time to time, despite his age, Rodolfo still goes to the distribution center to help.
Potential change maker
Davao’s Partoza saw the Inquirer potential as a change maker as soon as it was launched 29 years ago, months before the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
“We were with the Inquirer from the very start. At first, it was an advocacy, because of the chaos then due to the dictatorship. We were promoting the alternative press at the time,” Partoza said in a telephone interview.
“It was dangerous at the time because we were being threatened. It was dangerous to carry the [Inquirer],” she said.
After the restoration of democracy in 1986, it did not take long for her advocacy to become a full-fledged business. Today, Partoza brings 4,000 copies of the Inquirer across Davao region, Compostela Valley province, General Santos City and North Cotabato province, among other areas in Mindanao.
“We have to bring the newspaper even to remote areas. The Inquirer really encouraged us to spread our wings and go to hard-to-reach areas,” Partoza said.
Credibility
It is the Inquirer’s courage and consistency in uncovering the truth that continues to draw loyal readers, according to dealers Noel Cabaero of Central Luzon and Jim Feliciano of Iloilo City.
“It’s the paper’s credibility, because compared with others, [the Inquirer carries strong views and its contents are varied, which are what readers are looking for],” said Cabaero, who distributes 850 Inquirer copies a day.
Feliciano, whose 24-year-old dealership business spun off from his family’s publication venture that began in the 1950s, believes discerning readers remain loyal because of the depth they find in the Inquirer stories.
The Iloilo dealership brings more than 2,500 copies of the Inquirer to the province and to neighboring provinces of Antique and Guimaras.
“For me, it doesn’t matter if there’s the Internet [as an alternative news source]. Subscribers go for the details, which they don’t find on TV or the Internet. So they still buy the newspaper to get the story,” Feliciano said.
The ‘big deal’
As Magsanoc said, the dealers “have been the big deal” at the core of the Inquirer operations, vital in the work as the paper carries on the spirit in which it came into being.
“The Inquirer is 29 years old this year. And for every year of those 29 years, you have been the big deal in the very existence of this newspaper. Because of you, the whole country knows that the Inquirer is all about sustaining and celebrating our hard-earned, restored democracy through the Edsa People Power Revolt I that stunned the world,” Magsanoc said.
The Inquirer has a daily circulation of more than 350,000, with pass-on readership five times this figure.
The Inquirer brand has a total reach of 12.3 million readers across its platforms, including Inquirer radio (dzIQ 990), Inquirer online (www.inquirer.net) and the Inquirer digital edition accessible via mobile devices.