Rappler internship

The press row at the PICC.
Thanks to Ate Sheila for the picture!

I've been away for most of the summer, but if most of you spent it in beaches or on trips abroad (ehem, Katz!), I took an internship with Rappler. I filed stories from the Comelec beat for Rappler's election coverage, and if you take a look at #PHVote coverage, you might see my byline on quite a few of the stories there.

Election coverage was fulfilling and humbling. I spent three years sitting in writing classes and discussions on ethics as a Journalism student. But what really put me through my paces was fighting for room during ambush interviews and trying to formulate questions that wouldn't be dismissively answered by Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr.

As souvenirs I have with me two IDs that share the distinction of being my first press cards: one from Rappler, and another, my media accreditation ID from the Comelec for the midterm elections. What a great way to start off.

Now it's on to grueling Senior Year, which I hope will be my last as a Journalism student. Wish me well.

If you're wondering where I've been

Apparently, I've gone to a library every week this month. I'm just as surprised as you.

Journalism in a hurry

Note: Blog posts tagged "J117" (such as this one) are requirements for the Online Journalism class I'm taking this semester. See all of my J117-related posts.

Source

They say journalism is "history in a hurry." The profession is all about reporting stories accurately, fairly, and completely—but also very quickly.

A decade ago, printing "history in a hurry" meant a whole day of legwork—scurrying around from office to office gathering documents and talking to sources to create a comprehensive news story. When Pinatubo exploded in the 1990s, newsrooms sent out reporters, who talked to sources and wrote stories, which they sent back to their desks for broadcast or publishing.

We're finding that today's journalists don't even have the luxury of one workday. In the era of online news, journalism isn't just journalism anymore—it's journalism in a hurry. In 2009, when Ondoy hit Manila, reporters were tweeting what their sources were telling them and uploading photos taken from their phones on Facebook.

Paul Bradshaw's diagram on how digitization has changed the news production cycle is very interesting. In a matter of years, the three stages in the news production process, once distinct, now occur simultaneously. They've become layers, and not stages, of the cycle.

Bradshaw adds that because so many newsrooms have switched to this model, the new process has become formalized. Post-Web news organizations now have the same important editorial process and responsibilities as pre-Web ones, which is very important for the integrity of the profession.

The ground is shaking underneath the feet of the world's journalism educators. J schools should catch up with this in the next year or two if they don't want to lag behind in the long run. We should definitely keep teaching students the long-held tenets of journalism.

But we should start teaching them how to perform their job in a fast-moving world. I don't think that's being done enough right now. It's harder than you might think to be fair, balanced, accurate and ethical in a world of Twitter, Facebook and an audience whose appetite for news seems insatiable. I think that requires a wider skill set than the ones we're currently teaching.

There isn't much difference between what journalism schools teach and what the industry expects. There is, however, an inadequacy—the methods taught in school are for an era bygone. They've outlived the context in which they were taught. What we need to start working on is how we can teach the same quality journalism in an entirely different paradigm. And we better hurry. The Web won't wait.

Journalism as practice informed by theory

Note: Blog posts tagged "J117" (such as this one) are requirements for the Online Journalism class I'm taking this semester. See all of my J117-related posts.

Journalism education is a funny thing: it attempts to teach what can be learned only on the field. I know this from personal experience. Even in classroom discussions, I learn the most not from PowerPoint presentations, but from the anecdotes my professors share in between slides.

Jeff Jarvis is right when he says that the industry is extremely disruptive. But it's wrong to conclude from this that Journalism schools should be teaching the "journalism of the future." That's an entirely different boat. The reason is simple: because of the rate of acceleration of technologies, what we think of today as "the future" may be part of the past tomorrow.

Bradshaw's right: now's a good time to change the paradigm of journalism education and start teaching the art of journalism more than "how to be journalists." I personally think it should have been done this way from the start, and not just because of the rapid changes we have been experiencing. At any rate, now's a good time as any.

I think what Bradley means is that journalism isn't a question of how to use certain tools or how to write in this medium or that. Amidst rapidly changing technologies, only the core values of journalism will be worth retaining in the future, which is why, as Jarvis suggests, J-schools should focus on teaching the value of persistent legwork, strict verification, and ethics.

But even then, these core values of journalism are merely theoretical. How do we give them meaning? Through more rigorous practice. In UP, for example, just one internship course isn't enough. The Journalism department could be organized as a massive newsroom that produces news for the college's media outlets. Practice should be at the root of our curriculum, not just a single course number to be taken during our last summer term in college.

Journalism, after all, is a practice, and theory is only supposed to serve as a guide towards an excellent practice of journalism, no matter the technology or medium.

Results of my 30-day challenge for March

Last month, I started a 30-day challenge to start and keep a clean routine. I'm happy to say that it's been very successful.

I don't have photos of my workspace, mainly because I was up to my ears in work during the last week of March. I pulled all-nighters frequently that week. I slept at 2am on the 31st and woke up two hours later to attend to org-related things, and, after our last activity for the semester, rushed back home and packed up to leave for my shortened (but nonetheless existent) vacation.

Take my word for it, though: my desk and my workflow has improved since I started the challenge. My desk still gets cluttered, but here's the thing: it's such a breeze to clear now. Clearing it up used to take a whole afternoon's worth of time. Now, it's as easy as picking up the action item on my desk (it's usually either a reading assignment or a paper that's just been graded and returned) and deciding whether it should go to my "In" bin or to the "For Sorting" pile for long-term storage.

I credit my newfound ease to two things. First is the existence of the "In" bin (I refuse to call it an inbox—sounds too official). The second is the mindset of "sort this right away," which is a tenet of David Allen's Getting Things Done system. It's all about making sure that things are assigned to where they should be for proper action as soon as possible, instead of just sitting on your desk in a sort of "limbo" state.

That said, though, there are improvements that need to be made to my workspace as well as my workflow:

• A bigger desk. Mine still gets cluttered because I have too little surface area to work with, especially with all the things I have on my desk.
• A wide file case. I have one of those plastic ones, but because my reading assignments tend to be very thick, it quickly reached its capacity. I've seen wider ones made of stronger plastic. I might invest in one of those, especially since I will theoretically be able to use it all throughout college, as I plan to transfer everything inside it to a cardboard box at the end of every semester.

My 30-day challenge for April has already started, but deserves a separate post. 

Colonial undertones in The Walking Dead

Funny things happen to your viewing habits when you have an absurdly well-read Marxist critical theorist for a professor. Recently, I noticed that AMC's "The Walking Dead," a TV series adopted from the graphic novel of the same name, runs on quite a colonial theme.

TWD happens in a post-apocalyptic world, after humanity is torn to pieces following a horrific zombie outbreak. Government relief camps have probably been overrun by infected people. The Center for Disease Control was supposed to give hope for a cure, but it blew up on itself after it ran put of power. All semblance of civilization is now either destroyed or rusting in obsolesence.

In other words, the human race has come back to Square One.

Here's where the colonialism starts. The main characters of the story compose a group of survivors looking for resources and other possible signs of life. Most of the members of the group are white. They have a token black guy and an Asian with them. Most of the dirty work is assigned to the two of them. This includes going into town centers usually brimming with zombies looking for a meal when supplies are running low, or otherwise fending off "walkers." The group also has a gun-toting hillbilly who is constantly presented as violent and irrational. The keepers of order, those who keep things running, are of course the Caucasians.

The de-facto leader of the group is Rick, an awarded police officer. At the start of the series, Rick was presumed dead by his wife, his son, and his partner on the job (who was sleeping with his wife, on account of his being probably dead). But Rick got out of the deserted hospital he had been confined in, dressed himself—in his police uniform, which says quite a lot—and was able to reunite his family and their newfound group (and eventually boss people around). This is quite a feat, but it is necessary to establish that even after the world has ended, a a cop—an agent of the State—is still in charge of things. This theme is further strengthened by the fact that despite all the Hell the group has taken on, Rick never forgets his policeman's hat.

At one point in the series, Rick is sitting at his son Carl's bedside. This is after Carl has recovered from being nearly killed by a deer-hunting bullet. Rick takes off his hat and has Carl try it on. When he is well again, Carl asks his parents if he can learn how to shoot a gun. He takes it as a coming of age. A gun will finally make him a man—and not just any man, his father's man, the one who will assume his father's leadership responsibilities in due time.

Oh, and Carl was shot by a hunter from another group of survivors who lived on a farm ranch. The hunter, taking full responsibility for his actions, takes Carl and his parents to the farm. Its owner, Herschel, is the family's patriarch. He is a veterinarian and is therefore the closest one can get to a doctor, on account of the world having ended and all, so he offers to operate on Carl. Eventually, Rick's entire gang becomes guests of the ranch. They're offered board and lodging, and in exchange they help out with the chores. (Glenn the Asian guy also goes out to town to fight off zombies for supplies.) Eventually, they get too involved in the ranch and start feeling as though they owned it and were not guests of it. Herschel makes it clear that he expects them to be on their way once Carl has fully recovered.

But Rick says no, although he understands where Herschel is coming from. The place is nice, safe, secure, has defenses, and food and water are accessible. So they continue to insist on staying indefinitely, negotiating with Herschel. But he's having none of it.

And the kicker: a member of Rick's group finds out that Herschel keeps zombies in a barn on the ranch. The zombies are fed chickens everyday. Herschel still thinks of the zombies as people, and he says modern medicine will eventually find a cure for them. And they're undead, so they can afford to wait. (Herschel has not been informed of the destruction of the CDC at this point.) Rick thinks it's too much of a risk, so, despite it being Herschel's ranch, they break the barn doors open and kill all of the zombies inside. Herschel is on his knees and weeping.

This story's been told many times before.

How would you write a news story on a fairy tale?

Here's how esteemed British news outfit The Guardian would cover the story of the three little pigs. In my Introduction to Journalism class, we were made to write a story on a fairy tale or children's story of our choice. I wrote about "The Emperor's New Clothes." It was a simple crime story, so we didn't really do any news analysis, but what The Guardian did in the above video is really, really interesting.

At the fair

It was the last night of the UP Fair on Saturday. Katz and I went, along with her sister Sanse and Sanse's boyfriend. We chose Saturday because that's when all the big bands were scheduled to perform (including Parokya ni Edgar with an "exclusive performance," whatever that means).

There were more rides and games this year than last. We spent a lot of time trying our luck in the shooting games. Katz won a ginger doll, which she named Barry. I won a Winnie the Pooh phone dangler. It wasn't even the bear's entire body, just his head. So I named him Paulo. (Pooh-ulo? Get it? K.)

Katz thought we should try the rusty Flying Fiesta ride (I'm not sure what it's really called but that's the name of the similar ride at Enchanted Kingdom). I was hesitant at first—the ride at EK made me woozy—but Katz was game, so I didn't object.

At the end of the ride, I looked at Katz. She was nauseated, and had her head buried in her arm.

We bought snow cones (apparently, cold food after a dizzying ride is supposed to make you feel better) and stood around as Up Dharma Down played their set. I'd hoped that once she'd rested we could squeeze ourselves into the crowd like we did last year, and hopefully catch Moonstar88 play Panalangin (the only OPM song I've LSS'd on in four years). After a while, though, Katz decided she was too dizzy. We left at a little past 11 and hung out on the Main Library steps.

All in all, though, it was still a fun night. The most exciting part happened before we even got in: Katz and I had four extra tickets, so we scalped 'em for P150 each, P250 for two, P400 for four (we bought them at P90 apiece). Apparently, I was yelling too loudly, and I caught the attention of a couple of the fratmen manning the grounds.

One of them asked how much I was selling my tickets for, and I smiled and said, "Oh, P90."

"P90? I heard P150."

"No, no, just P90," I said, nonchalant.

They asked to see the tickets and, after verifying their authenticity, let me go but stayed close behind us. I continued to hawk the tickets at the original P90 price, and a few guys asked for a discount. "P70 nalang, presyong kaibigan."

The fratmen, still behind us, said, "Hindi pwedeng ibenta ng P50, P90 lang talaga."

In the end, we sold all four of our tickets. It was a great night.

25-34/365

Allow me to dump all my Project 365 photos into one entry. I'm feeling too lazy to create individual posts for each one.

Last weekend, Katz and I went camping in Makiling, Laguna. The trip was a requirement in our Military Science class, which we're taking up to fulfill our National Service Training Program (NSTP) requirement. All college students in the Philippines need to participate in the NSTP as a prerequisite to graduation. The precursor of the NSTP was the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program.

Ooh, and I finally have a new pair of headphones! I bought the JVC Flats upon Ade's recommendation. They're dirt cheap—P410 at Compex in SM North Edsa—and are quite good. The bass can get quite muffled on these, though. Ade says an amplifier might improve their performance, but I haven't any money left. (I'm taking donations, if anyone's willing.)

Penoy

So let's see, what has Aquino managed to do so far? Chase after his predecessor using slipshod, ill-advised legal tactics, check. Throw a hissy fit after a co-equal branch of government catches his mistake, check. Throw another hissy fit after the same co-equal branch of government decides to finally give the land that his family has claimed for decades to the people who actually own it, check. Throw a massive tantrum and pick an unbelievably childish fight with same co-equal branch of government, check. Send his spin doctors all over the media to widen his bullying efforts, check.

Promise to gradually disavow public tertiary education and focus instead on creating a workforce of merely employable sub-professionals—and thereby giving up on national development efforts—check.

This whole Corona impeachment issue has revealed Aquino for whom he truly is: an inexperienced, whiny, inconsolable brat with more hubris than hair. Even this early on, we know that Aquino is a forgettable President.

I know I haven't posted anything lately (Frivolous Academic Oval photo 03)

so here's a pretty picture of the Academic Oval.

Fooled by cardboard

FML. Saw this in Eduk last week—

So I went ahead and took one. But...

Fooled by a cardboard box tacked to a bulletin board. FML.

Pedring damage

Kuya JC and I took a walk around the Academic Oval at around 1130pm Tuesday, just hours after the worst of Pedring. The campus is hella devastated, although thankfully not as much as Roxas Boulevard, the Mall of Asia and Sofitel.

Tons of fallen branches. I woke up Tuesday morning to see lashing winds outside my window; a text from the Chancellor had spread around saying that classes were suspended—until 1pm, which is really a WTF move, considering that, oh, I don't know, there's a nasty storm ripping apart roofs and uprooting trees outside.

Thankfully, an hour after that announcement was made, it was superseded by a whole-day suspension. The following day there wasn't any rain anymore, and classes were once again suspended until 1pm to give everyone time to recover before we went back to studying and fighting for greater state subsidy.

Trees in front of UP-Ayala Technohub, now growing sideways thanks to Pedring.

These are the times we live in.

Tonight I thought I'd stop by AS on my way to dinner to find out what was going on. They're having a cultural night, with performances from various artists that depict the history of the struggle of the university and its students.

What an auspicious way to spend the night before the university makes history once more. Tomorrow, UP students and administrators will walk all the way from Quezon City to Mendiola, along with other state and private universities, to signify their opposition to Noynoy Aquino's abhorrent policies. They will march in opposition to yet another hefty budget cut the national university is poised to sustain. They will march in opposition to cuts to the budgets of state tertiary schools. They will march in opposition to Aquino's gross underfunding of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and of public health in general.

Simply put, UP will march all the way from Diliman to Mendiola because our President has neglected his responsibility to his nation's youth and people too gravely.

Frankly, I do not think Aquino will be shaken in the least by tomorrow's demonstration. His policy—to gradually drop quality tertiary education from the list of his government's responsibilities—has been rock solid since last year. No matter how resonant our call is—and more fundamentally, how crucial quality college education is to the development of a nation—he will probably not listen to it.

But what will matter is that he will know that we know what he is doing. He will know that we won't forget, neither will future generations, and neither will history. He will know that even as he has not been in power for two years, we already know what he will be remembered as: the President who shirked his responsibility to the nation's future.

UP is on strike.

Starting yesterday, the University of the Philippines Diliman went on strike to oppose the Aquino government's continuing neglect of its responsibility to state universities and colleges.

San Juan Representative JV Ejercito paid a visit to the AS steps, where youth leaders, UP officials and some of his fellow congressmen spoke for greater state subsidy. He said more than 100 lawmakers have signed a manifesto supporting the call for state support for tertiary schools.

Student Regent Kristina Conti said such a manifesto, though nice, is really an empty gesture because there isn't any overt action accompanying it. Sure, you want more financial support for state universities, but where's the money?

Kabataan Partylist Representative Mong Palatino, meanwhile, said that however determined Congress might be to increase the budget of SUCs, Aquino will still have the final say. Even if both houses of Congress agree to add to the budget of state schools, when the budget bill reaches Aquino's desk he can still choose to veto such additions. This is why it's a good idea to pressure Malacañang and the Department of Budget and Management about state subsidy for SUCs, he says.

In 2010, Aquino said, "We are gradually reducing the subsidy to SUCs to push them toward becoming self-sufficient and financially independent" because they had the "ability to raise their income." By income-raising ability, he probably means leasing public lands meant for academic use in shady and nonbeneficial deals, or shifting the burden to supposedly state-funded scholars by charging them higher tuition and laboratory fees.

The sad truth is that Aquino's outlook on quality state-supported tertiary education in the Philippines is this: "I don't give a shit." He does not care about training and creating our future engineers, social scientists, artists, journalists, filmmakers and novelists. He does not care about securing the country's industrial, cultural and social future.

He does not care about the future of this country.

His communications team will, of course, say that he does, and will point to his myopic programs—the Conditional Cash Transfer and Public-Private Partnerships—as evidence. Perhaps some will believe their drivel.

But those of us who know what's really at stake, who really understand why there is such an uproar over Aquino's admitted policy on quality tertiary education in this country, know that he has no sense of history, that he has a complete lack of ability to see beyond the horizon. Any president who looks at quality college education as an unwanted burden on the state does not understand what quality college education really means, especially if that president went to a private university and is a rich haciendero.

It's only been two years since his ascent to power, but we all know that for all the history and prestige he used to climb to the top, he will be a forgettable president.

We will not forget.

September 14, 2011: one more reason to hate Manila

Manila is a mess. It's a poetic thing to say in a literature or creative writing class, but not so much when you're stewing in traffic on Padre Faura at 245pm when you should have been in the lobby of the Supreme Court for a class field trip at 155pm.

At 115pm I was in a taxi on Katipunan, on the way to the LRT station. At 125pm I was on the platform. While waiting for the train I called my classmate Elle to confirm the instructions I'd received earlier (train to Recto, transfer to Line One, train to UN Avenue). She handed the phone over to Angge, who told me I should have taken the MRT to save time. The taxi driver had told me the same thing, but we were already more than halfway to the Katipunan station and I wasn't about to tell him to go to Quezon Avenue instead.

Angge said I could get off at the Cubao station and board the MRT from there. When I got to the MRT there was a hellish line to get tickets—I've never seen a working MRT ticket machine in my life, and apparently they don't sell stored-value tickets—and I decided I might as well fall in, seeing as how I was already there.

While I was in line, a woman came up to my left and walked alongside me as the queue progressed, apparently trying to cut in front of me. I'm generally nice, but I have little tolerance for people who cut lines. I don't care if you're in a hurry or are running late for something. Unless you need immediate medical attention, the back of the line's that way.

So anyway, this woman, she was walking alongside me, and we started to play this silent queue game. I started to position my body to block any attempts she might make to step in front of me. She must have noticed, but she tried hard to stay nonchalant about the whole thing, keeping her gaze squarely on the ticket counter, pretending to crane her neck worriedly and wiping her neck with a piece of tissue. In the end, though, I got to buy my ticket to Taft before she did. Victory.

Or so I thought. The MRT is almost always very crowded, and I had to squeeze in and stand all the way from Cubao to Taft. (It's not as bad as Line 1, which requires passengers to inhale all manner of human stenches, but not as nice as Line 2, which, even during rush hour, is peaceful and roomy.) At Taft I flagged down a taxi and told the driver I needed to get to the Supreme Court.

"Sa Padre Faura 'yun, diba?" he asked.

A tentative "opo" was all I could manage, because back in Diliman I only have to know which color goes where to know I won't get lost. On Roxas Boulevard the driver confirmed directions with me, and I, finally surrendering to my geographical ineptitude, consulted Google Maps.

Google Maps, by the way, for all its amazing features, wasn't able to give me driving, transit or pedestrian directions from Roxas Boulevard to the Supreme Court. It was able to tell me that the Supreme Court was indeed on Padre Faura, though. "Oo nga po, sa Faura nga po," I told the driver confidently.

The next thing I know we're in Robinson's Manila, waiting to turn left onto a one-way street when I had a really strong hunch the gate I was looking for was the other way. But because I really can't find my way around Manila, I trusted my driver.

Just two corners later we were stuck in traffic again, this time on the street fronting the Philam Life building. By this time the taxi meter was at P110, and my now-agitated driver said he would turn right to UN Avenue, but go no further. It must have been around 240pm by then, and I was running out of options, so I paid him and walked out of the taxi and into the clogged street. I remember thinking, "This is so like those Hollywood movies where the protagonist is running late and the window of opportunity he's been waiting for the entire movie is about to close."

So, not long after that, I went all the way with the Hollywood metaphor and broke into a sprint. I presented my ID to the guards at the first Supreme Court gate I saw. They told me I should go to the other gate. I said "okay" and continued my sprint, but, after seeing that I was now running along the fence of the UP Manila College of Arts and Sciences, went back to clarify that we hadn't misunderstood each other. We hadn't indeed, and I ran again. Past the UP Manila fence I finally saw the Supreme Court building, presented my ID to the partly confused dude at the guardhouse—he looked like an intern to me—who waved me off without fussing.

At 255pm I was in one of the smaller courtrooms in the building (the ones where division hearings are held), panting and perspiring, my ass sweat staining the upholstered pews of the highest court in the country.

Gawd, I hate Manila.

Trying to make up for being a very bad reader

I've mentioned that I'm reading Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado for the Literature and Society class I'm taking up this semester. Even though the term isn't finished yet, I think I've really learned to upgrade the way I read literary works. I read the stories in our syllabus as thoroughly as I can, but after we discuss them in class I always walk away with the feeling that I didn't read into the assigned work deeply enough.

That feeling of shallowness has eased since the term began. Somehow, though, I think I'll have to reread Ilustrado to really see what Syjuco's trying to say. In fact, starting with my second reading of Ilustrado I've decided to defile my books by filling them with post-its and making marginal notes on their pages to help me read them better. I've also bought a small notebook on which I'll be making notes as I read.

In a sense I'll be starting from scratch, acting as if I've never read a novel before. I'll begin with what are widely considered "classic" works: The Catcher in The Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, Of Mice And Men, Lord of the Flies, and The Old Man And The Sea (number one on my list of Best Books of All Time). Frankly I felt really highbrow reading them back then, but after English 11 I realize I must have been so pretentious.

But in literature, most everyone gets a second chance.

It's a universal conspiracy that's keeping me thin!

This was lunch:

Three cups of rice and two dishes: chicken adobo and a beef-and-onions thing whose exact name I don't know.

Decisively demolished.

Afterwards I bought two apples from the fruit stall at the Shopping Center and a bag of corn bits at the Coop.

The rampage continued at dinner, which consisted of two deathly crispy pieces of Chickenjoy (no other product is more aptly named), two cups of rice and a glass of Coke Zero. Annihilated.

Before I went home I bought a McFlurry Oreo to eat on the jeep ride home.

All of which begs the question, why the hell aren't I fat? It's a conspiracy, and I won't stop until I get to the bottom of it.

Forgotten Photo 03: Sleepy at Eduk

I hang out at Eduk a lot, mostly while waiting for Katz. Last Friday I fell asleep in this corridor with my copy of Ilustrado over my face. I do that a lot—I have no problem lying down anywhere there's free floor space that isn't hideously dirty.

The dean of Eduk happened to walk by my hibernating body and apparently thought I was sick. She woke me up with a gentle nudge and an "Okay ka lang ba?" and told me I could go lie down on the Language department's couches. I very politely declined the offer, said I was fine, and thanked her.

She said okay, and added, as she was walking away, "It's a nice book."

I still haven't finished it.

Fancy metal ballers

Stainless steel, P450 apiece (though we got them for P390 each at SM North) at Silverworks. Prices may vary. No, this isn't a promotional thing, though it's gotten me thinking...

gpoypwyhtpdtv (gratuitous photo of yourself posing with your homie Trinidad Pardo De Tavera)