I CANNOT recall the American journalist who said column writing is like getting married to a nymphomaniac. “It was great for the first two weeks.”
Imagine, therefore, the difficulties of one doing a column twice weekly for the past ten years. It is like living with a virago with sex-overdrive.
There are my thoughts on two local publications that had earned plaudits as models of success in provincial journalism. These are SunStar Pampanga and Punto Central Luzon.
The publications are effective and thriving not only because of the people who work for them, but because of the men behind them.
Newspaper people are expendable no matter how brilliant they are. I have served under several SSP editors and I know that the newspaper continues to thrive because of its publisher(s).
Not too remote in the past I have cited SunStar Pampanga co-partner Levy P. Laus for his bold and pioneering investment in newspaper publishing.
There are more moneyed business people in Pampanga than LPL. That they refused to engage in local newspaper publication is what heightens and deepens my admiration for the man who threw his resources in a high risk gamble.
For many decades I have known popular Pampango politicians and men of fortune who had planned to put out a provincial daily. One such leader, although a Bulakeño but Kapampangan by heart, so he admitted, was then Labor Secretary Blas Ople whose dream was to publish a Central Luzon newspaper with editorial and business offices in Pampanga.
His aspiration vanished with the exile of his patron, President Marcos.
When Mr. Laus intimated his desire to partner with SunStar publications and put up SSP in his province, people knew he was not bluffing. The businessman has a reputation of doing what he says. Margaret Chase Smith must have drawn a guidepost for LPL, “Don't trade a record for a promise.”
If our readers are not kept regularly “high” or excited about what younger columnists write, consider the sickly aging guys, some like myself, who cannot come up with the expectations of an oversexed lover.
The writer should not be disheartened if his readers do not show appreciation to his columns. Somewhere out there someone gets your message. It is blessing enough that he is read.
In whatever condition, in fair or foul weather; in sickness or in health, the columnist is committed to do his job. It is the same way a priest does his to his church.