AFTER 15 years of serving as SunStar Davao’s Editor-in-Chief and eight years as different levels of editorship, Stella Estremera will bid goodbye to the company.
Estremera started out in the company as a managing editor in 1995. With this position, she also simultaneously functioned as the executive director of SunStar Davao Yearbook from 2004 until 2010. It was in 2003 when she became both the Editor-in-Chief of SunStar Davao Superbalita and SunStar General Santos, the latter position having had lasted only until 2009 because the General Santos operations was closed.
Until March of last year, she handled both SunStar Davao and SunStar Davao Superbalita. After the position for Superbalita was given to Alger Dura, the former managing editor, Estremera focused on SunStar Davao alone.
Years of being a journalist earned her 23 awards and prizes for column writing, news writing, and investigative reporting specifically on the subject matters of science and technology, environment, peace, and family and child rights.
Estremera is also the only five-time individual awardee of the Unicef-Philippine Press Institute Awards for Child Friendly Journalists and Newspapers.
The book titled ‘ALAB: The awakening of Filipino Nationalism’, which was co-authored by Estremera came out June of last year. The book was published by the Tboli Publishing and Distribution, Inc. in California, USA. It was co-authored by Estremera together with the OFW Global Movement for Empowerment.
Under her management, the company had been guided and had been through a gamut of different layout transformations and most recently, the digital initiatives of the company. By instilling in the minds of the team that SunStar Davao is a content provider, Estremera had guided the editorial team towards ‘going digital’ which, no one can deny, is the current trend. She had anticipated this trend long before smoke came out of the chimney.
Effective August 1, 2018, she will no longer be SunStar Davao’s EIC. Taking her place is Reuel John Lumawag.
Lumawag first worked as a reporter for two years in the company in 2013. After that, he was SunStar Davao columnist for a year and a half. Until July 31, 2018 Lumawag was the Business Editor of SunStar Davao.
“Accepting this job is both exciting and nerve-wracking. It is exciting because there are new challenges waiting for me that will allow me to become a better journalist. Nerve-wracking because this is a whole new experience for me,” Lumawag said.
Aside from this, readers should also look out for greater general changes to take place with SunStar Davao starting August 8, 2018. Such changes will be taken to provide better services to its readers.