Juan L. Mercado

HE started as a reporter in a Cebu daily, Southern Star, in the early 1950s. Juan L. Mercado, known to colleagues as Johnny, joined the Evening News in Manila, covering the Senate and later becoming its associate editor. He covered the United Nations (UN) in New York and served as a correspondent for foreign publications that included London’s Financial Times and Honolulu’s Star Bulletin.

Johnny is the Philippine Press Institute’s founding director. He also edited DepthNews, published by the Magsaysay Award-winning Press Foundation of Asia. Along with 21 other journalists, he was detained during Martial Law. Still under city arrest, he edited “underground newspapers” that evaded censors and reported on the dictatorship. The UN later posted him in Thailand, then in Italy.

Following the “People Power Uprising” and UN retirement, he returned to journalism work in the Philippines. He writes columns for Philippine Daily Inquirer, Cebu Daily News, and Sun.Star Cebu. 

The Department of Science & Technology honored him as one of “50 Men of Science” in 2008. For his weekly Sun.Star columns, he was awarded as best columnist during the 13th Cebu Archdiocesan Mass Media Awards in 2007. In 2005, he was among the Cebuano achievers cited in the “Garbo sa Sugbo (Pride of Cebu).” Rotary Club of Manila named him “Journalist of the Year” in 1968 and “Opinion Writer of the Year” in 2004. The University of San Carlos selected him as an outstanding alumnus in journalism in 1971.

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