#CourageON: ‘See enough and write it down’

I got assigned to the environment beat by accident. A series of reports had to be written about plastic waste in September 2020 but there was no one to write them. I volunteered because I wanted to write. I was a social media producer for Rappler then, probably one of the youngest staff in the newsroom, and it was the pandemic.

The stories took many revisions. It didn’t help that the subject (on extended producer responsibility) lacked sexiness. Jee Geronimo, the desk editor handling the beat, didn’t tolerate holes. She wanted the stories tight.

The following year, when restrictions had improved, the newsroom sent me to Rizal to visit Masungi Georeserve. The night before the trip, I wrote down questions in my notebook. I was afraid my blunders would all be recorded on video. 

But in the field, I found that my job was the most natural thing in the world. Talk and ask questions, make observations, coax out a genuine reaction, take notes. 

“See enough and write it down,” American journalist Joan Didion had said. We walked for hours among the trees and ancient limestones. We crossed hanging bridges and I had to do my first standupper on a  suspended metallic web. I talked to the man running the place, and then another man who was shot for guarding the place. The Masungi story is a heady mix of land claims, environmental laws, and conservation work. Glenda Gloria, our executive editor, had to tell me before I started writing: You need clarity of thought. She told me she could always assign the story to somebody else.

A year following the presidential elections, Jee told me they needed an environment reporter. And that was that.

Since then, there have been many chances to see things.

When Pia Ranada, now our community head, came back from her fellowship in the US, we flew to Tacloban City and interviewed people in the housing projects, the family of a child called Landa, the nurses who assisted women giving birth in the days of the Super Typhoon Yolanda wreckage. We stayed at a cheap lodging and drank beer along the bypass road overlooking San Juanico Bridge. 

In January 2024, I rode my bike around a 120-kilometer loop in Metro Manila to report on bike lanes. We recorded a whole day’s worth of footage from three cameras. Editing was brutal. I would sit down many times with former production staff Nina Liu and JP San Pedro, and our multimedia head Beth Frondoso, to make edits real-time. During that process, I remember our CEO Maria Ressa, coming from a meeting, telling me I have the fun part of the job. I get to chase the stories.

Fishermen from Navotas, Lian Buan and I found out while working on a two-part investigation, were being arrested at sea for crossing the borders of town waters. Old men lamented the trade they used to do with their fathers.

In South Cotabato, I talked to indigenous peoples struggling to protect land rights amid mining operations. They live with the memory of the massacre of those who opposed the coffee plantation in their ancestral domain. A young datu showed us two gunshot wounds from the massacre. Later, while writing the report, I would find a story by our investigative head Chay Hofileña on Blaan communities’ opposition to mining in South Cotabato. It was published in 1996. I was not even born yet. The thought gave me strange comfort. For decades, we’ve been saying: the center cannot hold. But the stories are the same.

The environment beat is a coverage of many enduring conflicts. As conflicts are passed down, so are stories. Give us a chance — and the support — to continue the tradition of storytelling, find more loyal readers like you, innovate in whatever medium the zeitgeist demands. A longform, a news report, a series of investigations, a documentary, or a TikTok.

Help us do our jobs.