#CourageON: Reflections of a reporter turned newsroom manager

Today marks the end of my McLuhan Fellowship. I write this newsletter on March 13, the day I gave my last McLuhan lecture at the University of the Philippines Baguio.

To those not familiar with the Canadian embassy’s Marshall McLuhan Fellowships for Excellence in Journalism, it is basically a speaking tour, during which the fellow of that year can raise awareness about an urgent issue in the media. 

I went on the Canadian leg in February last year, which took me to five Canadian cities. The Philippine leg, which began in November 2025, took me to University of the Philippines Cebu, Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Iloilo’s West Visayas State University, University of St. La Salle in Bacolod, and finally, UP Baguio.

In all of these trips I was accompanied by the embassy’s head of public affairs, Carlo Figueroa. He has accompanied every fellow to every lecture, since 2005. It takes a certain person to be able to travel, manage, and make comfortable each and every McLuhan Fellow, with personalities and habits as varied as the islands of the Philippine archipelago. But if anyone can do it, it’s Carlo. 

What makes the McLuhan Fellowship special, and prestigious, is that you don’t apply for it. The fellow is chosen by the Canadian embassy from a pool of Jaime V. Ongpin Journalism Seminar panelists, who are, in turn, selected by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, based on their body of work the previous year. 

As I look back on my McLuhan journey, I realize that it allowed me to explore my transition from reporter to newsroom manager. 

It was a transition that surprises even me sometimes. Because I distinctly recall a moment when I was a twenty-something reporter, knee-deep in coverage in the mountain forests of Abra, when I promised myself that I would never, ever not be a reporter. I vowed that I would never become an editor or a manager in any form. I loved being a reporter too much.

Then the Duterte presidency happened. Those years as a full-fledged political reporter covering Malacañang forged me in the fire of hostile beat reporting and an investigate-against-all-odds hunger.

The harsh truths of the Duterte administration were definitely a story that needed to be told. But I found myself curious about another story: the story of how we are telling stories, and how vulnerable Philippine journalism is in the face of populist, authoritarian figures like Duterte. It was shocking to me, idealistic and young as I was, to see how easily the “presstitutes” narrative could unleash vitriol and hate for journalists. 

Who is to blame? That’s an endless debate. But what we can’t afford to debate on is the problem of trust in society, and that we need to repair it.

So I became interested in the process of repair. It was my focus of study during my John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. And now, as head of community, a daily practice. 

What makes me get up in the morning is knowing that my job is about keeping newsroom journalism alive. Maybe my twenty-something-reporter self is disappointed. But my thirty-something-newsroom-manager self would hug that younger me and say: this is for you. In a way, I am still honoring the dream of my younger self, because the work I do today is about preserving the job of the reporter, and hopefully making it better.

The challenge that I and other newsroom managers face is to find new ways of making independent journalism sustain itself. A creative destruction happening in journalism, and I get to dive in headfirst. My team and I have launched successful crowdsourcing and crowdfunding campaigns; pioneered a “conversational” form of journalism where our readers get to be part of our reporters’ interviews with newsmakers; used AI for policy-informing community consultations; gone around the country holding town halls, workshops, and fora, and more.

In all the cities I’ve visited, the local journalists I speak with all agree that the industry as we know it is in trouble. Many newspapers and stations have closed shop, leaving news desserts in many communities. Newsrooms are losing good people because of limited budgets, made even smaller by shrinking advertising revenue, which in turn is due to various reasons ranging from generative AI search, to platforms like Facebook lessening the news you see in your feeds.

It’s not surprising then that journalists who can strike out on their own do so as news creators. That’s all well and good, and my greatest respect to those who excel in that form of storytelling. But I think the world loses a lot too if newsrooms die out.

Newsrooms are the manifestation of journalism as a collective endeavor. A reporter can tell a story, but our community growth team helps that story reach more people. Our production team helps tell stories in video. Our civic engagement team brings that story to communities, through on-ground events, then funnels those communities’ sentiments back to the newsroom in a virtuous cycle of trust-building. Our sales team finds companies and institutions willing to work with our newsroom in ways that pay the bills, but stay within ethical boundaries.

Newsrooms are a training ground for compelling storytellers, allowing young people to learn, make mistakes, with that cushion of support, protection, and mentorship. And whether they decide to stay and help the newsroom, or go off on their own as individual creators, then that’s still one more great storyteller added to the world.

Newsrooms allow journalists to focus on gathering information and reporting, because other teams, with their own expertise, are focused on distributing that report, and finding ways to pay for the cost of independent journalism. Not all reporters want to be content creators, because that requires skill sets, and worries, not everyone wants to be loaded with. Newsrooms are happy to provide that, and more.

I guess what I enjoy about my new role is the view. When you’re a reporter, you’re, in a way, supposed to have tunnel vision. You go for depth, getting nerdy about the nuances and technicalities of your field of expertise or assigned sector. As a newsroom manager, you need to have a wider view of things: it’s not just about the story, but how the story is told, who gets to read or watch that story, and if, in fact, that is the right story to tell now. 

This is the journey I shared with all the schools and institutions I visited during my McLuhan Fellowship. To all the students, department heads, deans, fellow journalists, and fellow citizens who organized and attended the talks, my heartfelt thanks. Seeing the support people have for Rappler and for journalism in general truly lifted my spirits. Every selfie someone asks for, every group of students who approaches me after my talk, every person who shakes my hand, has made me feel valued and seen. 

To the Embassy of Canada, and Carlo, thank you for keeping this fellowship alive for the benefit of Philippine journalism. – Rappler.com