Thursday, November 27, 2008 Wanted: A sensational reporter By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
It would have been an ordinary Tuesday afternoon except for the smell of lechon wafting across the newsroom and a stranger demanding a particular kind of reporter.
“Who is your sensational reporter?!” he asked in a stentorian voice and tone that struck everyone dumb in confusion. “I want to talk to your sensational reporter now!”
Sensational reporter? Did he mean a reporter who has become a sensation like a celebrity or did he mean a reporter who sensationalizes stories?
If he meant the first, I mentally ran through a list of the Sun.Star Cebu reporters who may have achieved some personal or professional feat that I didn’t know about. Did Linette Ramos win Miss Barangay San Antonio?
If he meant the second, then he was in the wrong newsroom. The business of sensationalizing stories is done in the Superbalita newsroom, located a floor below.
“Who wants to earn money? I will give the sensational reporter P10,000 cash right now to write an expose!” The bespectacled newsroom visitor, still in a stentorian voice, made the offer expecting to see everyone in the newsroom to raise their hands.
Before he came in, our thoughts were on the lechon, which we were waiting to be served in the pantry. It was the paper’s 26th anniversary and everyone was in an eating mood.
But when this stranger, who was acting with the urgency of one who had to use the toilet right now, made the P10,000 offer, we knew the lechon would have to wait for 15 more minutes. This guy here needed our urgent attention.
I introduced myself and asked how I could help him. He declaimed: Trees are being cut on Osmeña Boulevard, near PLDT! What are they thinking cutting down trees?! They’re cutting down trees because they want to put up lights! I am concerned of our environment! Are you not concerned of our environment?! I want a sensational reporter to go with me right now! I am going back to Manila tonight! This is a big story! I will pay P10,000 to have this story published! Put it on page one! But don’t identify me! Don’t quote me!
I heard the subtle sound of a screw being unhinged.
I asked him his name, which he hesitated to give. He mumbled something about being a close friend or a relative of some top government official he didn’t name. He pulled out a business card from his wallet, which did have money in it. It was a business card of a technical director of a food manufacturing company based in Manila.
Calmly, I told him that we will check out his information and that there was no need to pay anyone P10,000 and that we don’t have a sensational reporter. Taking my cue, assistant news editor Charmaine Rodriguez assigned reporter Elizabeth Baumgart, who could well be a writing sensation, and photographer Arni Aclao to verify the tree-cutting on Osmeña Blvd.
Mr. Strange Visitor was right about the tree-cutting but the trees were only pruned because their branches and foliage were getting entangled with electrical wires and covering the street lamps. The trees were becoming pedestrian hazards.
Business editor Liberty Pinili, who covered the environment beat for years and who witnessed the sensational afternoon in the newsroom, said while we were finally eating lechon that the green campaign has bred people who are extremists, like Mr. Strange Visitor, and people with so much money that they do nothing else but campaign for the environment.
Once in a while, the Sun.Star newsroom gets this kind of visitors. Journalists never know who they might get a visit from.
