A Disservice to the Journalists
1:19 P.M. Saturday, October 20, 2007, Manila Time
Before anything else, I would just like to report that yesterday, a bomb ripped through Glorietta 2 in Makati at around 1:30 in the afternoon. My roommate had passed by the scene when she was heading for a friend. I was looking for lunch and generally clueless. I learned about it through my dorm room in Makati.
My parents in Iloilo were frantic. My cousin, her dad (my uncle), and his wife were also worried about me. I was clueless and asleep, though I had read about the blast from the GMA website at around 2:30 in the afternoon.
My father’s take on it: destabilization from the government’s end. My take on it: the Abus.
Just this Tuesday, I had read that the Abus had been given money for terroristic motives because of a plea aired on YouTube. I had blogged about it on Gadzooki.com. I wonder how that is actually related to the recent blast? And to learn that this happened yesterday, in the same city I live in, is it normal to just believe that this is part and parcel of life?
I guess it’s because I am painfully aware of how the world is ending, that’s why I really don’t want to dwell on it. All I know is that the times are escalating. There is no room for people to remain deluded and unaware.
Now, as for the real reason why I decided to write again, it was just that I actually am appalled at how big-name dailies pay their workers only so much.
I had always been intrigued as to whether what I can make as a freelancer can compete with the salary of those who are in big-name national dailies in ‘Pinas. But according to this article by Rowena Carranza-Paraan, a Manila-based tabloid reporter said that they get Php 100 per story. It could go up to Php 350 if the reporter’s article was used as a frontpage banner story. They would get Php 150 if the article ends up as a banner in the Metro section. As a rare phenomenon in the journalism biz, the Philippine Daily Inquirer pays a 5000-peso retainer to only two correspondents in its four bureaus. Two times four is… Eight? And to think PDI has over 200 correspondents? The Philippine Star, according to this same article, is the “only daily that has promoted some correspondents to regular employee status”. And the number of these lucky individuals is still relatively minuscule in their fleet of writers.
The going rate for national daily paper correspondents is Php 35 per column inch; Php 50 per inside page article, and then Php 500 per front page headline.
So the glory really isn’t in being published, huh?
Well, I actually should know. I used to write a column for a local paper in my city, and I wasn’t paid at all. My dad used to write a column in the biggest daily there, too. And though he didn’t mind because he used the paper for exposure purposes, he wasn’t paid too. :p So Rowena Carranza-Paraan was right in saying that the provincial writers did these for gratis. :p
And we wonder why so many of us go out of the country, and the country bleeds dry of talent. Tsk tsk.
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Now we see a few supposed to be journalists who sell their souls to the highest bidder. I always saw journalism as an advocacy and not a profession. We see a host of journalists give up their lives in the line of duty.
What we do as bloggers are no different from what they do. We too call issues as we see it. The only difference is how we deliver our views. Advocacy not profession, this is what it is all about. This is the reason why we dare tread the fine line and earn the ire of those who see us bellyachers and not as crusaders. And the paid hacks hit us every time we tell the truth.