28 September 2005
OPINION: Handling media
AFTER ALL
Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr.
SINCE we started in this trade, back when we were still in college and just earning our spurs from the likes of veteran writers and editors Armando R. Ravanzo, Bayardo E. Estrada, Dominador P. Navarro, Magno Vent Cornel, all now in the Great Beyond and Dante M.Velasco, Gerardo E. Garcia, and elder brod Rhee Fer. Hortaleza, all still active and practicing the calling, we guess we’ve done our own fair share of ministry work for journalism.
Campus journalism seminars, classroom lectures, press club skills workshops, media orientation gatherings and similar activities in various places have seen us teaching the new ones whom we’ve often visualized stepping into our shoes when the time comes. As fate would have it, our two daughters seem to have inherited the writing inclination (possibly, the genes), without much prodding from us. As was their luck, when they applied for their jobs, their former employers had simply felt they were a chip off the old block and pronto, put them a-writing. If there’s ever a forced learning, theirs must have been it, although we must admit, they already had the basics to begin with.
Last week, after a self-imposed semi-retirement from the journalism lecture circuit, we again found ourself engaging in the talk before a rather new audience – the corporate communications officers and various key personnel of the National Transmission Corporation (Transco) on quite a fresh subject: Media Handling.
As it turned out though, other than just discussing the hows and whys of interacting with Media, we (brod Rhee, Radyo ng Bayan’s Bernie Errasquin, and Skycable’s Rommel Partosa, Migs Velarde and Marlon Marville) ended up answering a slew of questions from the Transco guys who were mostly uninitiated on the ways of the press, about Media’s role in improving the moral standards of society. While the audience was low on practical skills of journalism, it certainly was high on perception of the morals and attitudes that should govern the craft.
We believe we all acquitted ourselves well in the “engagement” though.
It was such a welcome change from the humdrum lectures we do on “5 Ws and 1 H” in the journalism lecture circuit. When people probe into your philosophies, and you offer to share these with them, there’s some catharsis that follows.
As the veteran journalist, now executive director of the Center for Culture and Mass Media Foundation, Inc. Alito Malinao told his audience of young masscom students yesterday in the journalism seminar at the Lyceum-Northwestern University: Sharing joy increases happiness, sharing grief lessens the pain.
Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr.
SINCE we started in this trade, back when we were still in college and just earning our spurs from the likes of veteran writers and editors Armando R. Ravanzo, Bayardo E. Estrada, Dominador P. Navarro, Magno Vent Cornel, all now in the Great Beyond and Dante M.Velasco, Gerardo E. Garcia, and elder brod Rhee Fer. Hortaleza, all still active and practicing the calling, we guess we’ve done our own fair share of ministry work for journalism.
Campus journalism seminars, classroom lectures, press club skills workshops, media orientation gatherings and similar activities in various places have seen us teaching the new ones whom we’ve often visualized stepping into our shoes when the time comes. As fate would have it, our two daughters seem to have inherited the writing inclination (possibly, the genes), without much prodding from us. As was their luck, when they applied for their jobs, their former employers had simply felt they were a chip off the old block and pronto, put them a-writing. If there’s ever a forced learning, theirs must have been it, although we must admit, they already had the basics to begin with.
Last week, after a self-imposed semi-retirement from the journalism lecture circuit, we again found ourself engaging in the talk before a rather new audience – the corporate communications officers and various key personnel of the National Transmission Corporation (Transco) on quite a fresh subject: Media Handling.
As it turned out though, other than just discussing the hows and whys of interacting with Media, we (brod Rhee, Radyo ng Bayan’s Bernie Errasquin, and Skycable’s Rommel Partosa, Migs Velarde and Marlon Marville) ended up answering a slew of questions from the Transco guys who were mostly uninitiated on the ways of the press, about Media’s role in improving the moral standards of society. While the audience was low on practical skills of journalism, it certainly was high on perception of the morals and attitudes that should govern the craft.
We believe we all acquitted ourselves well in the “engagement” though.
It was such a welcome change from the humdrum lectures we do on “5 Ws and 1 H” in the journalism lecture circuit. When people probe into your philosophies, and you offer to share these with them, there’s some catharsis that follows.
As the veteran journalist, now executive director of the Center for Culture and Mass Media Foundation, Inc. Alito Malinao told his audience of young masscom students yesterday in the journalism seminar at the Lyceum-Northwestern University: Sharing joy increases happiness, sharing grief lessens the pain.
