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Friday, September 30, 2005
Seares: Ivan P. Suansing, newspaper editor
By Pachico A. Seares
The View from Here
“I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good, so that God will not make me one.”
—Mark Twain
Mark Twain was ap parently not just being humorous. He must have really hated the work of editors. Editors have to suffer writers who do not want their work touched by editing. Mark Twain knew that—-he was one of those writers.
The perpetual tension between editor and writer has always been there. The editor wants to fix things. The writer doesn’t want his “work of art” fixed.
And that conflict is only one of the afflictions on the editor.
Daily struggle
The editor must also wrestle daily with the task of planning the paper’s content, executing the plan, and coping with various problems along the way, all in the heat of deadline.
In between press runs, the editor must tackle irate news sources, dissatisfied readers, and other stakeholders who believe producing newspapers is a breeze, just as easy as peddling detergent or burger.
On top of all this, the editor must look after the economic plight, physical safety, and ethical problems of his journalists.
Horde of concerns
Ivan P. Suansing, who died the other day at 43, was former editor-in-chief of Sun.Star Iloilo. As chief, then consultant on editorial operations of Sun.Star Publications Network, I had worked with him before he joined Cebu Daily News.
He tackled the usual horde of concerns of a newspaper editor—-and then some.
From relatively placid waters of Iloilo, he was plucked and brought to Cebu where the waters are more turbulent. Competition here is stiffer and demands of the work are more grueling.
Weight of burden
In a meeting last May 21 at the MBF Cebu Press Center between local journalists and officials of the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), Ivan raised the problem of one of his news reporters being harassed by death threats.
The visiting PPI officials’ answers gave little comfort to Ivan or any other Cebu journalist in the room. But it told us the weight of an editor’s burden.
A reality in newsrooms is that a bad heart, battered by waves of stress after stress, or poor health, induced by uneven and unceasing demands of the work, can be as lethal to an editor as assassin’s bullets.
Ivan was not felled by a gunman. He succumbed to a heart problem. Mark Twain must have known too that kind of risk on an editor’s life.
In harm’s way
Ivan at first wanted to be a lawyer but, he said, he changed his mind when he first stepped inside a newsroom. No smell of printer’s ink, just the sight of people glued to their computers, working on stories that will make some sense out of the day’s events and issues. Still, to him it was exhilarating.
Did he see the danger lurking? He must have, if not on his first day, then the days after. Otherwise, he would have long fled the editorship to a job less punishing.
He knew the risk of being an editor and embraced it gladly. His only regret apparently was that he could not stay longer in harm’s way.
(September 30, 2005 issue)
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