Category Archives: journalism

blog, journalism, news

Emil Guillermo on the passing of a newspaper: Aloha Honolulu Advertiser

The major morning daily in the state of Hawaii died this morning after 154 years.

In 2005, I left the mainland to join the Honloulu Advertiser for a brief fling.

I didn’t realize that just as I was realizing my dream of being an “ink stained wretch” that newspapers were nosediving faster than my retro-career was ascending.

When I got there, the Advertiser boasted about hitting revenue records. After a year, cost cutting measures were already in place.  Trust me, the “Tiser didn’t go broke transporting my little Toyota from the Mainland. The spending cuts should have been the tip-off.

But newspaper people, despite all the negatives you see  in the news, are really professional optimists.

No need for a correction now, the paper was sold for half of what the old owners bought it for. And some of my old colleagues are scratching their heads trying to figure out where they fit in the new one paper town. The Star-Bulletin, the small paper, ate the big paper, the ‘Tiser. The new paper may have indigestion. I hope it survives.

I’ll also miss the Advertiser because it was the first paper to which I gladly silenced my voice, my byline, my perspective, to write under the masthead, which at that time sported hibiscus.

I”ve learned my lesson.

Little known fact. I used the flower in an editorial once as in “stopped to smell the hibiscus.” I thought it clever until my dutiful then-editor, the great Hawaii political analyst Jerry Burris told me “Hibiscus don’t smell. Plumeria do.”  Hence, I stopped to smell the plumeria.

I would have liked to have smelled it a bit longer there. But I returned to California in 2007, happy for the experience of seeing the dark side of paradise as a journalist, but realizing that the media was changing faster than we all thought.  

In my next Twitter, I’ll try to squeeze in the next Watergate.

blog, diversity, journalism, news

To Grads: The truth about journalism

June is grad season, and globetrotting millionaire journalist Christiane Amanpour has graduated to the place for old journalists.  No knock on Amanpour who left CNN and war zones to join Disney’s Sunday salon in D.C.

My quarrel with her is over what she said to the 2010 class at Harvard recently.

I’m not jealous of her. I spoke at Harvard’s Class Day in 1977 as class humorist.  I told 3,000 mostly rich white people about being a Filipino at Harvard. I appeared as Marcos.  It was a crack-up. For details, you’ll have to get my book “Amok.”

I don’t know if Amanpour channeled a dictator during her speech. In fact, I wouldn’t have known about it had she not used that new media technique known as Twitter, where she tweeted thusly: Delivered Harvard Class Day speech for seniors yesterday. Great honor for me! Urged them to pursue journalism, find passion and purpose. 6:08 AM May 27th

Twitter’s great isn’t it? But here I can respond in more than 140 characters.

I’m glad she’s honored. It was an honor for me. My first stand-up comedy routine. And then I went into journalism.   Amanpour did the reverse. She spent years in the trenches covering wars and wearing Safari outfits, and then went to Harvard to deliver her biggest one-liner:  She actually urged people to pursue journalism.

That’s a funny line.  But easy for a multi-millionaire journalist  to say.

The fact is many of the journalists I know are currently under or unemployed. Among them a few Pulitizer prize winners and a number of regional and local award winners who just can’t get a job because there aren’t any.

The journalism industry’s business model has disintegrated in the last five years, and the only way a news organization  seems to stay in business is by cutting wages, people,  and coverage.

It’s not pretty.

In Honolulu, the small paper bought the big paper making the city a one newspaper town with one too many staffs. Many of my old colleagues who have done nothing but journalism are now polishing up resumes to send where? The next newspaper that will go under?

In radio and TV, your best prospects of getting a job is not having done a hot story, but being hot and young (which means you have no kids, mortgage, nor a need for a high salary). Great.  But it’s unlikely you’ll cover Watergate. Or even a City Hall scandal.  Maybe you’ll get a murder. Is that your passion?

And if you’re a minority, the days when diversity was valued by the mainstream media are over.  An industry loses compassion in survival mode.

You want the future of journalism? You’re seeing it. The niche market. Highly targeted audiences. Not the shotgun approach of the “mass media.”  When was the last time your local mainstream paper even printed the word “Filipino” in the context of your life, your community?  That’s why one of the outlets I write for, the Philippine News, the oldest Filipino newspaper in America, has real value.

Perhaps I’ve reacted to Amanpour more acutely because recently I gave a talk to 5th graders at the ACORN Woodland Academy in Oakland.

How can you tell 5th graders in the inner city with a straight face to go into a dying industry?

So I was honest.  I told them you could make millions, or you can make ten cents a word. I told them they are already  licensed to be journalists. The First Amendment (which they had just learned about) gives them that right.

Now the question is are you curious? Do you want to know–everything? And once you do know, are you burning to tell everyone the truth about it?

If so, you are cursed, but journalism will be both your blessing and reward.

That’s more honest than Amanpour’s message at Harvard.

(Oh, and I also told them to learn how to tweet).

blog, diversity, journalism, news, race

Mainstream media finally notices: Olympic champion diver Victoria Manalo Draves is still dead after 19 days

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I first heard of Victoria  Manalo Draves’ death more than two weeks ago.  

Draves was an important, iconic figure in the Filipino American community. Born to a Filipino father and a Caucasian mother during a time when mixed-marriages were against the law, young Vicky Manalo  was shunned as a kid in San Francsico from swimming among whites. It didn’t stop Draves from becoming an Olympic champion in 1948.

Of course, that doesn’t mean she gets the respect she deserves on the day of her death.

Today’s obit in the New York Times shows just how far Filipinos, even half-white ones, can be in terms of real inclusion.  

It took the Times 19 days to report the death of an Olympic champion, excusing its tardiness by saying  Manalo’s  death “had not been widely reported.”  I heard about it through the ethnic media.

So the mainstream’s elite newspaper is just 19 days behind in reporting a significant death of a Filipino American. At least now we can measure how far behind the mainstream can be.

So much for diversity in journalism.  At least it wasn’t 19 years.

blog, journalism, news

With “Partial Martial,” Philippines President Arroyo secures her legacy as “Marcos Lite”

President Arroyo has finally secured her legacy as “Marcos Lite.” 

That’s my name for the president who has managed to keep the corruption levels and human rights violations during her administration under a level to cause absolute world-wide indignation.

She’s President Obama’s buddy, right.

But now Arroyo has unequivocally earned her sobriquet by using the already horrific Maguindanao mass murders  to justify martial law, a straight steal from the Marcos playbook.

For one second, perhaps we can let cooler heads prevail. Is it really all that bad? It’s not full martial law. Just in Maguindanao.

Call it “Partial Martial.”

Of course, there’s no such thing as being a little bit pregnant either.

But let’s give the president the benefit of the doubt.

The power move shows Arroyo certainly isn’t going gently into her good night. I thought P.M. was supposed to stand for “prime minister,” reportedly  the next coveted  position  Madame Arroyo was concocting for future occupancy. That would require some changes in the Philippine democracy itself,  but it seems that with this “p.m.” Arroyo’s already applying some aggressive  constitutional interpretation.

She’s even using the same rule that Marcos used to invoke full-on martial law.

But as Pacifico Agabin, a former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law, told Inquirer reporters, Arroyo’s declaration is  unwarranted and unnecessary as the government has shown control of the situation in Maguindanao with the arrests of the Ampatuans.

 “The only grounds for the declaration of martial law are invasion and rebellion. I don’t think the Ampatuans are capable of launching a rebellion against the government,” he told the Inquirer.

He added that the constitution requires “actual rebellion,” not merely a threat.

There was already a change in the law in 1987, so that a repeat of Marcos could not be possible without a real threat to the government.

The U.S. Constitution, from which the Philippine Constitution has a “martial law” clause. But who in his right mind would declare it in a democracy without a real threat to the government.

Certainly a president can issue a “state of emergency” if need be.  But to go right to martial law?

In this case, Arroyo has taken off her soiled velvet gloves and revealed her iron fist.

Did she really think it would be as becoming with her red dress?

There’s no reason for partial martial, period. A massacre, as bad as it is, isn’t a rebellion.

So what’s the purpose, of p.m.?

Well, p.r.

 Arroyo likely feels the only way to distance her administration from her former allies the Ampatuans is to come down hard on on all of Maguindanao.  With partial martial, she creates the illusion of zero tolerance, whereas all along she has actually empowered the Ampatuans to do as they wish.

She also tests her power. Partial martial let’s her feel the wheel of absolute control in a portion of the archipelago, and let’s her consider an option. Could she go all the way in a transgression of the constitution to extend her presidency for “the good of the country”?

Legislators and the people must speak out now. Marcos Lite? “Partial Martial” is a clear sign of a second coming.