Why Cebu journalists rock
National awardees
Why Cebu journalists rock
CARLOS H. CONDE
[First published in www.pinoypress.net.
Dec. 1, 2006, republished in CJJ4 2008]
HERE’S why journalists in Cebu are very much ahead of their counterparts in Manila and other regions in improving their craft and their interaction with their audience: anybody who has a complaint against journalists or newspapers can file it through a website put up by the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC)
The website, developed by Sun.Star’s Max Limpag, also has a list of journalists working for each of the member newspapers.
I’m always amazed at the way Cebu journalists are often united in issues such as press freedom, ethics and accountability. Their Press Freedom Week celebrations are unique in that they don’t only hold parades but also workshops and seminars on press freedom and journalism (of course, there’s also the beer and the partying).
Their intensely competitive newspapers (Sun.Star, Cebu Daily News and The Freeman) are some of the best in the country. One of the reasons for that, I think, is the fact that Cebu editors – like Sun.Star’s Pachico Seares, who sort of mentored me after he hired me as the first editor of Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro in 1995 – do not stop learning and do not hesitate to adapt to new trends and technologies.
Perhaps most important of all, these editors are not full of themselves. Unlike many editors in Manila that I know, Cebu editors are not perched on some kind of journalistic pedestal. Their reporters can still relate to them, even share beer with them. They don’t hesitate to mentor the younger journalists just as they don’t hesitate to discipline them when they breach journalistic ethics.
In many Manila newsrooms, there’s this wall that divides editors and reporters. You rarely feel that in Cebu newsrooms.
And now, the even higher and thicker wall that separates the press from the public is being torn down in Cebu by efforts such as the CCPC.
Kudos! 
Carlos Conde (third from right) with staff of Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro he edited in 1995.
Carlos H. Conde is “a senior researcher at the Asian division of the Human Rights Watch covering the Philippines.” Before that, he worked as journalist for 20 years, mainly as freelance correspondent for New York Times and as stringer, reporter and editor for a number of publications, including Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro. He was a fellow at Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), trustee of Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and 2003 Jefferson fellow at East-West Center of University of Hawaii.