Opinion. A MEDIAMAN MUST BE A JOURNALIST

Our title in this edition is inspired by the expression: “Gisugo lang og suka, pag-uli Media na.” (Sent on an errand to buy venigar, already a Media man when he came home).

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Being in the profession of a Journalist or a Mediaman is indeed glamorous even if it is not a lucrative calling.

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When I was a boy, I always got excited every time I heard a newscaster read the news over the radio. I always read to the last word the copy of the “Philippines Free Press” that my father used to bring home from work.

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As a high school teenager, I managed to become a volunteer Disc Jockey. That’s what they call the guy who spins the 45 RPM recording disc that plays the songs of Pat Boone, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and the girls Doris Day and others. Well, that was long ago. All the guys I mentioned have crossed the bar.

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So, I became a writer in our School Organ, the SMC Advocate of the Southern Mindanao Colleges in Pagadian before the place became a city.

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How happy was I when the news stories I wrote came out for the first time in the defunct Zamboanga Tribune.

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So when I edited the Cebuano Section of that paper, I was part of the few guys who founded in March 1968 the Federation of Press Clubs of Mindano at Imperial Hotel in Cotabato City.

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It was in that Cotabato event that I met the late Datu Abdullah Madale, the pioneer in Marawi Journalism that everyone at my age knows.

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So Journalism is a lifetime profession of one who loves the work even if he remains poor like me. It is a profession of love and life.