Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

that circulates in Dagupan City, Pangasinan Province.
The present owner is Mr. Ermin Garsia, Jr., the second
generation of the family who has carried on the paper.
Mr. Ermin Garsia, Sr. was killed in 1966 by the
government official he was about to expose for
involvement in an alleged money order racket. When
he died, the national newspaper wrote about his story
every day. He was the second journalist killed in the
Philippines.
“My father had told his friends that when he died he
wanted the paper to die, too. Because he knew that it
is a dangerous career. He didn’t think that his children
would continue the newspaper when he died and
someone else might take it over,” said Mr. Ermin Garsia,
Jr. But Ermin has carried on the newspaper up until the
present; he realizes its danger but he fights with the local
politicians as his father fought in the past. He is firm
that he will run a community paper to check the work
and policies of the local government, and that this is the
main factor that makes the Sunday Punch possess a great
number of readers; it is also the only press in Dagupan
City in which 50% of the advertisements come from
Manila. The rate of advertisement is 14,000 pesos per
page and 180 pesos per column inch. It circulates 7,000
copies per week with 14 pages in black and white and
sells for six pesos per copy.
He handles the policy of the organization while the
production is taken care of by the editor. He has
reporters, rewriters, art workers and an advertising
division.
The Baguio Midland Courier was founded in 1947
by S.C. Hamada of a Japanese-Filipino family. The
Baguio Midland Courier is a newspaper of Cordillera
province. It is an organization that runs a whole circle
of publishing, possessing its own printing company
named Baguio Printing and Publishing Co., Inc. This
lowers the cost of the newspaper and earns income from
printing. The organization consists of an editor-in-chief,
a general manager, an editor, reporters, an artist, a copyeditor,
editorial assistants, an administrator, advertising
staff, and a printing machine. It is a newspaper run
by the third generation of its founder’s family. There
are more than 20 full-time workers and more than 20
casual workers working on the day the paper issues.
There are 22,000 copies issue per week with 38 pages
in color selling for a price of 9.50 pesos circulating in
Baguio and Cordilleras provinces.
The Baguio Midland Courier was the first magazinesize
paper, beginning in 1977 with two colors. It
SOCIAL JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY
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is an organization where some students from the
Communication faculty go for their internships. Mr.
Chistopher Hamada, the editorial assistant, said “The
newspaper in the time of our grandfather began with
the expectation of fair, fearless friendliness. We present
the social issues happening in Cordilleras. We hope
that the news we present will cause good change for
society. Our reporters work hard, they have to search
for information from all sides, we do not allow our
reporters to just wait for press releases from the local
government.”
In Baguio, there are one daily newspaper and 11 weekly
newspapers that issue regularly. The Baguio Midland
Courier has more than a thousand subscribers from
other provinces around Baguio and Manila, including
subscribers abroad that are overseas Filipino workers
from Baguio and other provinces.
The table below shows the number of local newspaper
in the Philippines. There are 43 daily newspapers
with a circulation of 23,175 and 315 weeklies with a
circulation of 546,250. This is quite a small number
compared to the population of 85 million, yet at least
the provincial areas have their own papers to present
local information.
Table 1: Provincial Presses.
Provincial
Dailies Circulation
Provincial
Weeklies Circulation
Philippines 43 23,175 315 546,250
Luzon 3 21,500 209 403,600
Visayas 19 139,275 30 39,050
Mindanao 21 74,400 76 103,600
* Source : the Philippine Media Factbook 2000.
A common problem of the local press is its profit-making
ability, which is lower than the national ones because
of the low advertisement rate due to the low business
opportunities in the provinces. However, it is also a
fact that if the papers provide quality information there
will always be readers, and so the advertisements are
also regular. Mostly, the low quality provincial presses
are the presses that support either local politicians or
businessmen.
Other problems of local reporters are low income, no
health insurance, and no welfare. Information from the
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said
that 80% of them do not receive Social Security, 75%
have no health plan, 40 % of those who obtain health
plans say these are funded by their family, and 80% do
not own their house. These problems affect the quality
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows