I’m not saying this because, one day, newspapers will no longer exist. They will disappear, even from Saipan where the newspaper is still the primary source of local news. But journalism and the Variety are here to stay.
People will always need news, and years from now you will be reading the MV on your cell phone or on the latest, coolest version of Kindle. We’ll be in a paperless world where the “newspaper” is a Web page constantly updated by the minute, 24/7. Perhaps by that time, they would have also invented a wireless reading device for readers like me. I always read a book, any book, with a pencil in hand. I mark passages I like. I write down my comments, questions, praises, criticism. If I really like what I’m reading, I take out my notebook (I always have one, as well as several pencils and ballpens, in my knapsack) and copy entire passages or summarize key points.
I was in 10th grade, which was the last year of high school back home, when I finally knew I would be a writer — a newspaper writer. I had also considered being an astronaut, president, pope, playwright, more or less in that order, but then I read, for the first time, Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” and I told myself I must become like Howard Roark, the uber-architect. There were, however, two drawbacks to this career plan: math annoyed me and all I could draw were stick figures. So I decided to continue doing what I liked best: scribbling words on paper.
I had been drawn to books and newspapers since pre-school and I loved words so much that, in second grade, I took my teacher’s advice and tried to read the entire dictionary. I was halfway through the “A” words when Miss Teresita Jose saw me hunched over a thick Webster’s during recess and told me she was just kidding about reading the dictionary. I was relieved. The dictionary must be the most boring book ever.
Years later, before I went to college, my grandfather said I should consider becoming a teacher. Teaching is one of the noblest, if not the noblest, profession, he said. Without teachers, he added, there will be no doctors, no lawyers, no engineers, no journalists. His three eldest sons, my uncles, all became teachers and two of them became school principals. (My father, the fourth child, “rebelled.” He studied commerce in college and, after graduation, became a cop.) When I was a child, I would spend my school break in the house of my father’s eldest brother in Bongabon, Nueva Ecija province, the P.I.’s “onion capital,” and I would see peasants doff their native hats to Uncle Claro and say “Good day maestro.” My lolo was right about teachers, but I knew I had no patience for teaching.
Besides, this was the mid-1980s, and we were under an authoritarian regime. The writers for the only newspaper not controlled by President Marcos seemed, to me, larger than life. They were brave and true and good. Four years after the dictator’s ouster, I became a newspaperman myself and my first assignment was to write about 3M scotch tape.
There is, to be sure, a certain glamour involved in our line of work. You will meet famous or infamous people. You also get a front-row seat to history as it happens. But that’s about it for “perks.”
I was asked recently for advice by some high school students considering a career in journalism. I told them it’s sort of a “calling,” this job. You know you’re fit for it if you’re always curious — if you always want to know more about everything and anything. Our primary task is to inform, and you can only do a good job informing others if you are always well-informed. Moreover, you must be willing to work against deadlines and comply with high ethical standards. All this for a job that pays modestly. If you want to be well-paid or to be popular then writing for a newspaper is not for you.
But if you want a job that will never bore you, then step right in. For a journalist, there are only two kinds of working day: interesting and very interesting.
Now I remember why I’m still at it.
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