The Express Publications, completing a Silver Jubilee of media service

TOWARDS A GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY 25 YEARS HENCE

By CHITO D. DELA TORRE
December 22, 2012

Today, December 22, the Leyte Samar Daily Express begins to navigate its next 365-day course as a “positive, fair, and free” regional daily newspaper as it commemorates the 25th year (a silver jubilee, indeed!) of the Leyte Samar Express publishing industry in simple anniversary activities at its main office, the first floor of the Knights of Columbus Building along Padre Zamora street, Tacloban City.

As it does, the couple who are behind this trademark of free journalism in the Waray Region, Dalmacio “Massey” Candido Grafil and Alma nee Montallana, both from the province of Eastern Samar, renew their commitment of continually improving on their service of catering to the information needs of the news reading public in Region VIII.

A solid proof to that renewal is their having aptly prepared themselves, their personnel, and their office for the rising challenges to the publishing industry. On the mechanical aspect, they acquired and caused the installation right at this office last October 28 two units of the latest brand of printing equipment that can hasten newspaper production: one platesetter and one plate processor. Just after about 3 minutes – counted from the time the editorial content navigates to the “network” until it gets its finished form on a plate – the latest issue for the day of the Leyte Samar Daily Express is ready for printing. In the next hour or so, the newspaper gets off the offset printing process, ready for distribution to its different circulation outlets around the region. Between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning of each day, from Monday to Sunday of each week, newsstands in Tacloban start selling this newspaper. By the middle of last month, these two acquisitions, having been commissioned to their fullest, produced their first print form of this paper. The other preparations corresponded to these innovative changes.

This attribute further demonstrates the responsiveness of the editorial management. That is why it continues to attract advertisers and newsmakers. In another vein, it also helps prepare future journalists by enlisting interns from among mass communications and media-related courses. Its competent editorial force, themselves veteran journalists, headed by editor-in-chief Vicente “Ven” S. Labro, who hails from Catbalogan, Samar, provide the necessary guidance and mentoring (where needed) to all their staff members, including interns, and others who wish to work for the Leyte Samar Express publications.

Yes, publications, for aside from the daily, the Express family has also been publishing weeklies in the different parts of the region, with provincewide circulation, apart from a city edition.

The Express newspapering industry has kept on growing since its first newspaper publication, the Leyte Samar Weekly Express which first hit the streets exactly on December 22, 1988, less than two years after the Philippines regained its democracy from a dictatorial regime. The LSWE, acronym for that newspaper, became the mother of the weeklies subsequently published – the first inside-page provincial edition having been the “Leyte Samar Weekly Express Biliran Edition” under the editorship of community organizer-NGO worker Socorro “Intoy” Cotejar of Naval (capital of Biliran province) – until the birth in year 2001 of the Leyte Samar Daily Express (LSDE, or Daily Express, for short), thanks to the daring but encouraging idea of Emil Justimbaste who at once became its first editor-in-chief.

During the days of the LSWE, the Leyte Samar Express Newsmagazine was born, with this writer, while serving as associate editor and columnist of the weekly, taking the cudgel as editor-in-chief. The Newsmagazine continued until the daily became the regular flagship publication of the Express family.

True to its social obligation and duties, the Express family, notably the men and women behind the LSDE, adhere to the avowed ethics and principles of journalism and find active membership in such respectable media organizations as the national Philippine Press Institute, and some local groups, like the erstwhile and then defunct Leyte Private Media Inc., and the popular, now 12 years old, Express It At The Park (EIATP) which began with only four men – Massey himself, now LSDE columnist Alvin G. Arpon, Emil, and engineer Wilson Chan, general manager of Leyte Park Hotel. Other regional and provincial organizations, such as the Philippine National Police Press Corps, Samar Island Press Club, the Catbalogan Cable TV Media Nucleus (CCATMAN), Region Eight Tri-Media Association (RETA), and other independent media groups. Besides responding to requests for reportorial coverage (like those from regional government agencies and local government units, and even requesting militant sectors), or participating in building advocacy lines as the media sector, the Express, specifically the LSDE, also closely coordinates with the Philippine Information Agency. This involvement accentuates the “positive”, or pro-active, character of LSDE.

Among the pioneers in the Express family, aside from Massey and Alma themselves, had been David Genotiva, Loly Isiderio, Inocencio P. Maderazo, Atty. Aurelio D. Menzon, and this writer.

LSDE in Directories

Leyte Samar Daily Express appears in websites or blogs which present it as among those worth simply posting or displaying or as part of a directory, or fit for the “marketplace” (meaning, marketable).

In the National Library of the Philippines, the Information Technology Division online public access catalogue posts the following for year 2012 under the link koha.nlp.gov.ph/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=570427 in the NLP website:

From Sell123.org, tagging LSDE as company/Philippines/889095.htm, a screenshot of the entry says:

In the Philippine Information Agency Region VIII website, via web.vis.net.ph where the search link states “lineagencies/pia/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=1”, LSDE occupies the top space its “PA – VIII Daily News Reader”:

(The PIA is a Philippine government agency with a regional office in Tacloban, the first and only highly urbanized city in the Leyte-Samar-Biliran Waray Region.)

Here’s however a website entry, which is not (italicized texts) entirely true, from www.Tradezz.com, the LSDE being tag-linked as corp_644788_Leyte-Samar-Daily.htm:

The LeyteSamarDaily.net

In its own website, leytesamardaily.net, now, since 2011, finds a 3-column layout page with the following sections available only a mouse click after, below the date of posting:

On the left column – News with photo, and reference titles (Categories) to what you may want to read from the archives: ‘ANNOUNCEMENT’, Editorial, Letter (letters to the editor), features, opinion columns, entertainment, message (such as that of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the 46th World Communication Day, published on May 20, 2012), opinion columns, news (banner [News 1] and second stories), Ulat Sa Bayan, and uncategorized items;

The middle column is the main display board for the referenced items. A click on a chosen item leads to the full text of that item. Often it displays the top-billed photograph, followed by an editorial cartoon, a lead to the “Second Story”, and leads to the other articles. Opened after the Home page, the following information is given at the bottom of the full-display item: name of the writer (as tagline, if not mentioned in the beginning of the article as a by-line) or the source, date at which the item is published in the net page, guide as to where the item is found, and a folio on the “previous topic” and “next topic”. A feedback section is found at the bottom of the column, in which a net reader can write reactions or mere thoughts related to the item found in the upper section of the column, or to any other item accessed via this net page; and

On the right column – In the Home page, one finds leads to Opinion (often with photos of columnists, followed by a summary lead to News 1 and then leads to More news1 Headlines. The anchor section sometimes gives leads to the Feature stories, and titles of articles that are presently “Trending” (which also indicates how many are reading or have read each trending article), while the bottom liner gives exactly what number are you presently among those visiting the LSD net. Browsed, the net page next ushers your to a poll survey (today the survey is on the question “How often you visitLeyteSamarDaily.net” [then as you browse, the inside survey question faces you: “How did you find LeyteSamaDaily.net”], while for a longer time in the past, it was about rating the water service in Tacloban) which elicits reader’s participation, then it gives you the FaceBook “Like” pluggers, the “Live Traffic Feed” (a real-time view with menu) showing who reads what item and from which point of the globe, Latest Topics, and Recent Comments.

Here’s a screen shot of the “Trending” on the home page for December 19, 2011, as of 6:14 p.m.:

Fair Newspaper

The region’s one and only daily newspaper, that the Leyte Samar Daily Express still is, demonstrates its adherence principle of fair reporting, or fair journalism. Publisher Massey Grafil sincerely and deeply views it likewise as an obligation on the part of both the newspaper itself and its writers. Thus, it gives space to all those who feel they are affected by any item it publishes, except in the case of opinion columns, where, as established and sustained by legal jurisprudence and clipped up by editorial newsrooms, the contents and claims therein remain the sole and full responsibility of the opinion column writer. Even then, here, where some parties are affected, columnists get up to that level of being able to provide clarifications especially when their claimed “sources” are challenged”.

Examples of how LSDE responds to this obligation, when not available during newsgathering and editing (which actually includes “crosschecking for accuracy” – as I always emphasized in my lectures on news writing since 1975 to various audiences [high school and college students, community information officers, professionals, advisers of school or campus writers, fellow journalists, and government information officers]), are these references to letters to the publisher: denials and/or rectifications to allegations in a news item written by Alvin P. Cardines concerning the performance of nursing schools in the nursing board exams, sent in by ESSII/OIC, chief administrative officer Marcelo M. Uy of the Commission on Higher Education (letter dated March 2, 2011), Naval State University president III doctor of education Edita S. Genson, and Professional Regulation Commission regional director German P. Palabyab (the last two letters published on March 4, 2011). The effort on fairness went so far as to include this down-to-earth statement by Palabyab: “.... May I suggest next time; your prestigious newspaper should send me an experienced reporter, instead of a cub reporter who conducts his interview on the phone only. A more matured and experienced writer might have a different report. Your reporter by the way came to see me and claimed that his original manuscript was changed by your editor.” (Alvin called Marcelo on February 28, 2011 and the latter “stated that the CHED Regional Office has no data available regarding the issue .... did not identify any school” and told Alvin that his position was “OIC, Chief Administrative Officer” (not CHED OIC).

Growth and Acceptance

The preponderance of opinion column writers in a newspaper is in a way an indication of a newspaper’s growth and acceptance, gauging likewise the potential number of “followers” each columnist has anywhere in the world.

As of today, as could be gleaned from the LSDE net pages, this daily newspaper is endorsed by a total of regular columnists (otherwise, they would not anymore be writing for LSDE and their columns will no longer see print). The 19 names of columns and columnists are as follows (arranged alphabetically by writer’s name:

Behind the regular “Commentary” are the opinions of Fr. Roy Cimagala and the veteran national journalist Juan Mercado who writes with depth and historical insights.

There had been other columnists, editors, staff writers, and regular contributors (either as reporters or free lance writers) to both the LSDE and its sister publications, as well as in the harbinger Leyte Samar Weekly Express.