Dr. Resil Mojares was a chronicler of local media history. He believed in the importance of provincial newspapers as witnesses to the community’s transformation.
He was a journalism practitioner as a newspaper columnist, a director of a grassroots media initiative and a publisher and board chairman of a cooperative newspaper owned by journalists and the community. He joined us in media adventures and dreamed with us foolish journalists.
His columns for The Freeman titled “Sticks and Stones,” critical of local politics and the Marcos administration (the first President Marcos) caught the attention of powerful people. He was arrested on Sept. 23, 1972, when martial law was declared. He was eventually released but was prohibited from leaving Cebu for years.
He later moved to SunStar as a columnist for SunStar Weekend, the Sunday magazine. I faithfully followed him and his fellow columnist, Judge Simeon “Jun” Dumdum. I was a fan of both of them. I still am.
I remember clipping their columns and placing them in an album. Unlike now, when you screenshot an article or download a page and save it as a PDF, it was with scissors and paste for me.
Every Sunday, I would wait for his column, “Footnotes to an Absent Text,” and consume his thoughts in an unhurried, even prayerful, way.
That reminds me of what Judge Dumdum said during the tribute organized by the Women in Literary Arts-Cebu last Wednesday. On the day before he died, Resil visited two bookstores, he said. Fully Booked and Booksale. He added, and I’m paraphrasing here, that Resil often went to bookstores because, perhaps, he was searching for the Word. The Word of God.
After hearing this, I recalled my second-to-the-last encounter with Dr. Resil. It was during a Big Bad Wolf Book Sale in Cebu in one of the malls here, SM Seaside, I think. I was so happy to see him. He already had a stack of books under his arms.
I told him I would stalk him and pick whatever he picked. I just didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the enormity of rows and rows of books of all kinds. So I shadowed him.
He saw me. Didn’t smile. Still, I followed him while keeping my distance. He continued to ignore me. In fact, he looked very serious as he went through the books. He looked solemn, even prayerful.
Then I thought: This place must be like a church to him. He wasn’t to be disturbed. It was then that I decided to leave him in his church.
While writing for SunStar, Dr. Resil became part of the Barefoot Media Initiative (BMI), a grassroots initiative aimed at empowering ordinary citizens or NGO workers to be barefoot journalists. Before crowdsourcing or content creators became part of our vocabulary, we were already working at building community-based reporting without the formal institutional setups.
In one BMI training, I remember a lesson Resil gave participants. He talked about the lead paragraph in a news report. The lead is usually the first paragraph, sometimes the first two or three paragraphs, of a news article. It’s supposed to contain the most important part of the story and answer the 5Ws and 1H — who, what, when where, why and how. But deciding what is most important may differ depending on whether you are a journalist, a social worker, or an NGO writer.
In his talk, he pointed to the clock in the room. He said we wouldn’t have noticed the clock until he pointed it out to us. That, he said, is the purpose of the lead.
You bring attention to what otherwise could be ignored, probably because it wasn’t the most obvious, the most striking, or what people immediately considered the most important. The lead paragraph could point us to what others may be blind to.
I had four years of journalism education and the lead was never explained to me in such a way. It took a Dr. Resil to put it plainly, simply, differently.
After Barefoot Media, our journey brought us to The Independent Post, the only cooperative newspaper in Cebu. It was a daily broadsheet. Short-lived.
In his first editorial, published on page 1 of our inaugural edition on Dec. 22, 1997, he wrote: “This is not a third newspaper; it’s a different newspaper. The men and women who conceived and organized The Independent Post set for themselves, from the very beginning, the making of a distinct newspaper.”
Resil was chairman of the board, later publisher. I was news editor later editor-in-chief, when unpaid salaries led to members leaving and, eventually, massive resignations. It was a difficult and most challenging time for those involved. Because we went without salaries for months, some lost their homes, or had to pay the debts of the cooperative for several years afterward.
But we believed in what we were doing.
Imagine journalists, artists, printing-press workers, Cebu businesses and individuals who believed in a truly independent media becoming co-owners of a daily broadsheet newspaper, with journalists and the community deciding what was news.
It was, and still is, the ideal setup, I think.
While our cooperative media adventure floundered, Resil was with us all the way. He knew our pains. He helped out financially and in many other ways.
Even after the newspaper shut down, a small group of us continued. This time, we formed the Cooperative for Journalists, or C4J. Resil was still part of that. He contributed financially to help start the group.
C4J went on for a while, conducting online journalism trainings, but it eventually ended when members realized they needed to go back to regular, salaried work.
We kept in touch with Dr. Resil after that. Informally, though. But he was always ready to meet with us, to eat and drink at their house, with always-yummy food prepared by Ma’am Sally.
Resil dedicated one of his SunStar Weekend columns to me. The title was “Dreams of what we would rather be.” I have always felt very privileged by that.
He wrote: “For Nini, who confessed she’d rather be a singer than a journalist.”
It was in the Jan. 7, 1996 issue of the Weekend magazine. Let me quote from it:
“We can, from time to time, wander into that blue and airy space where float alternative versions of ourselves, but we shall come back. Nourished by daydreams, we shall exult in our power to invent and reinvent parts of ourselves, and we shall be perfectly content, rejoicing in the familiar sum that defines who we are.”
Resil, I have come back, many times.
Thank you.
But yeah, I still try to hit a note.