Thursday, May 29, 2008 So: Civic journ exhibit By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
IN the competitive world of civic journalism exhibits, delicacies such as rosquillos, dried mango, turones de mani and durian yemas can spell the difference between a journalist’s delight and a viewer’s delight.
A journalist appreciates the written piece that is put up on the wall but a viewer finds the gustatory items on the table more interesting. That’s why exhibitors Sun.Star Cebu and Sun.Star Davao spend more time replenishing the platters than explaining how the stories were produced.
With three other community papers from Southern Luzon and Davao, the two Sun.Star papers are competing for the best civic journ booth at the annual membership assembly of the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) here in Manila.
The exhibit is part of this year’s assembly that has gathered some 30 community newspapers and six national broadsheets.
The three-day assembly packs in forums on industry concerns, a presentation of the best practices of civic journalism and the Community Press Awards.
The exhibit has made Sun.Star Cebu and Sun.Star Davao friendly competitors. As a sign of peace, the editors of both papers have exchanged dried mango and durian yemas.
The two Sun.Star papers are not rivals, though, for the Community Press Awards. Sun.Star Cebu has long been inducted into the Hall of Fame for Best Edited Community Paper and is no longer qualified to compete. Sun.Star Davao is still a contender this year.
Among the industry concerns taken up in this year’s assembly are the right to information bill, the Human Security Act, safety and protection of journalists, the right of reply, local press councils, libel and defamation, guidelines for reporting disasters, media’s role in advancing human development policies, and a few more topics that look interesting in the program but actually induce snoozing.
The organizers try to keep the participants awake by providing them with bottomless coffee. I’ve attended several PPI assemblies to see the futility of coffee drinking to keep the eyelids from drooping.
The best way to combat snoozing is to have a snake slither around the room every now and then. This way, everyone in the room will be on their toes. I might just resort to this when I facilitate a post-prandial forum at 1:30 p.m.
Anyway, the PPI tries to keep the topics relevant to the community papers, more so now that it is seeing its membership dwindling. The coffee has nothing to do with it but many community newspapers are barely surviving. Several have folded up while others have been dropped from the roster for failure to pay their annual dues.
The civic journ exhibit is a new feature in the annual assembly. It is a contest where the winner is judged according to a set of criteria that does not include tastiness of the delicacy served. It precedes the launch of the Civic Journalism Community Press Awards, which Sun.Star Cebu can now qualify for.
Civic journ is not exactly an exciting subject for non-journalists but it produces news stories that aim to, in the words of veteran journalist Vergel Santos, “turn news media into a catalyst for community action, thus promising the community a distinct identity and sense of self-reliance in the new scheme of things.”
Ah, I’ll get some coffee to go with the rosquillos.
