25 years and counting

By Herbert Vego

AT age 25, the Daily Guardian has earned a unique niche in community journalism. It is one of the two Iloilo City-based daily newspapers that have survived the test of time while blending with online media.

I doff my hat to the persistent founder and editor-in-chief of this paper — Lemuel Fernandez and Francis Allan Angelo, respectively — for having persevered for as many years in keeping print journalism alive and expanding to social media.

Being just one of the many columnists here, I am not privy to the day-to-day challenges that the staff has plowed through.

I am glad to recall, however, that I have known publisher Lemuel Fernandez since the day he stepped into the office of Panay News on a forgotten date, probably in the late 1980s, when the paper was still a weekly. I was then the editor-in-chief.

The late Danny Fajardo, as founder and publisher of Panay News, saw in that young man the potential to rise up, up and away in print media.

When I left the paper, Lemuel had taken over as editor-in-chief.

We reunited at the Iloilo Press Club with my election as president and his as executive vice president in 1993 — if I remember right.

Incidentally, Panay News — now run by the Fajardo children — celebrated its 45th anniversary last April 18.

Of course, it was a pleasure having Fernandez as one of us, along with another newcomer, John Paul Tia, who would evolve into a Bombo reporter and, finally, general manager of Aksyon Radyo-Iloilo until now.

Little did Danny imagine Lemuel in a friendly competition with him with the publication of the Daily Guardian 25 years ago.

To Danny’s credit, however, scores of other former employees of Panay News have spread out to carve their own niches. Let me mention three of them.

I should cite a love story that developed within the four corners of our office at La Salette Bldg. on Valeria St. Our then-managing editor, Eden Jacosalem, assigned herself the job of interviewing a bachelor volunteer of the United States Peace Corps, Tim Stewart, for a feature story.

To make the long story short, Tim and Eden fell in love, married here in Iloilo City, and flew off to the United States. They now reside in South Carolina with their two professional sons.

We had Giovannie Va-ay as our circulation manager starting in 1984, if my memory serves me right. He spent much of his time filling a cabinet with personal files of old and new subscribers. It was that resourcefulness that familiarized him with the business side of newspapering.

Like Lemuel, Giovannie has morphed into a newspaper publisher. His weekly Journal Visayas is now 26 years old. Not long ago, he appointed me its honorary editor-in-chief.

Giovannie publishes another local weekly, the Panay Bulletin.

Eufemia Pedregosa, Panay News’ branch manager in Roxas City, moved on to become branch manager of a labor recruitment agency. Now retired, she has resumed writing, this time for the weekly Ilonggo Chronicles.

I have said enough to show that the Iloilo-based newspapers remain alive and kicking.

Having preceded all of the above names, I, now 76 years young, claim to be the oldest active print journalist in Western Visayas.

I started covering the entertainment beat for Manila newspapers 56 years ago, at age 20, in 1970 while still a journalism student at MLQ University. Sad to say, most of my contemporaries — including Douglas Quijano, Bert Bornay, Alfie Lorenzo, Ethel Ramos, Justo C. Justo, for whom I ghostwrote, and Lolita Solis — have passed away.

Writing for a living keeps me away from Mr. Alzheimer, as did Benjamin Franklin, whose picture appears on all USD 100 bills. He was already 81 in 1787 when he was elected to the Constitutional Convention that would frame the Constitution of the newly created United States of America.