Sanchez: Column writing

AS A newbie columnist for SunStar Bacolod in 2002, I tried to emulate the style sometimes of my LODI op-ed writers Letty Jiménez Magsanoc, Conrado de Quiros, and former SunStar editor Atty. Gina Gerangaya.

Wikipedia defined a column as a recurring piece or article in a newspaper, magazine or other publication, where a writer expresses his own opinion in few columns allotted to him by the newspaper organization. Columns are written by columnists.

I got to meet many acquaintances, colleagues from abroad, Metro Manila and elsewhere. I can agree (or disagree) with them, with my column coming out as mine, not a plagiarized article.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 is the origin of what has become a common proverb, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” The Biblical verse reads like this: “What has been will be again, / what has been done will be done again; / there is nothing new under the sun.”

As a modern idiom, “there’s nothing new under the sun” is often used as a world-weary complaint against life’s monotony. When Solomon wrote the statement, he was emphasizing the cyclic nature of human life on earth and the emptiness of living only for the “rat race.”

I can agree with that. For an environmentalist human rights columnist, catastrophes, murders, wars, epidemics, forest fires. These are interesting—or hohum—topics. Tiring, as millennials would say.

I have to watch out for fake news, I have to watch out that I will be caught with my pants down. Being a recovering stroke victim is no excuse to fudge on the truth.

I have to do my homework. I have to check my sources three or four times. In this time of instant communication, there is no excuse for fact-checking.

It helps that I also have direct personal experiences, talked and interviewed those who had been there on rat army worm infestation, victims of floods or had suffered from life threatening ailments. I can write or talk about them. All these years in the trenches, as friend, Columbia professor Paul Martin in the company of Ivy League professor writers in the book United Nations Reform and the New Collective Security released globally.

I have what they don’t have. I was muddied in the trenches.