|
Monday, June 27, 2005
Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro at 10
By Stephen Capillas
SO HOW does one write an article for the 10th anniversary of Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro? Pardon this writer for starting off this piece with a question but with last Saturday's company outing plus the usual deadline chasing things really got to a head.
With so much history to go by probably the easiest route to take would have to be taken from the personal perspective though this would mean lesser details in today's opening remarks for the 10th anniversary celebration.
This writer started working in Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro in 1997, when about a flank full of reporters/columnists and contributors came and went through its offices leaving their marks via their articles as well as stories about their rep and how they, in one way or another, helped shape the paper to what it was then.
Those stories were passed on to me and other interns, new employees and even old hands at the office who shared them to anyone willing to listen within earshot. One can maybe compare a day in the life.
The Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro office is said to have moved twice prior to 1997 when it was located at Gaabucayan streets alongside Gaisano mall this city--somewhere near the present site at Julio-Pacana Streets, Licoan.
The offices aren't exactly imposing--one has to walk a long, winding stairway in reaching the office, which was divided into the management, editorial and production offices with the printing press located outside.
And the office is anything but uneventful (as opposed to boring as some people can actually live with boring) as editors and reporters discuss, shout at and roar in laughter with each other over the burning issues of the day--as well as the burning issues of inter-relationships within the office.
It was more than a regular beehive of activity it was a place where one got to work with some of the best pros in the business.
Back then the paper's editorial team was something that every news outlet could dream or even boast about; one could cite names but then be accused of namedropping.
Still folks like Carlos Conde, an official of the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) who also worked as stringer of the Washington Times, steered the paper from 1995 to August 1997 and Froilan Gallardo, a stringer of the Washington Times, Philippine Daily Inquirer correspondent and AP lensman likewise worked as Chief of Reporters for the paper and Proculo Maslog, who served as editorial consultant and sports editor.
Lina Sagaral Reyes, now with the Women's Writers for Mindanao (Minda-Wow) and Palanca awardee was also on board as well as Bencyrus Ellorin, another PDI correspondent who now works as a community organizer and is a self-described freelance journalist.
Uriel Quilinguing who ran both SSCDO and Sun.Star Superbalita for a time after serving first as business correspondent and later business editor; Raffy Magbanua, who's now connected with Transco as information officer; Herbie Gomez, an executive editor now with Gold Star Daily; and the other columnists that graced this paper's pages like Ametta Taguchi and the late Dr. Costello, who perished in that fateful Flight 387 back in 1998.
These were some of the people I encountered in some form or capacity as I entered the offices. As mentioned time and again whenever we celebrate our anniversaries, we had our trials and tribulations in the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and the slow recovery that entered the millennium.
Yet we somehow managed to overcome and emerge not unscathed, but strong and filled with the same sense of purpose that marked the years that shaped us as a paper for the community.
Through all these we thank God, the sponsors and the readers for helping us in our journey.
For the paper's 10th year of existence is as much a tribute to the hardworking efforts of the people behind it and the community that continually patronizes it.
(June 27, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
|
