The weight of staying relevant in media

By Herman M. Lagon

There was something about that evening that did not quite sit like a celebration. It was supposed to be one—silver anniversaries of local newspapers usually are. There were familiar faces, polite applause, the kind of warmth that comes from shared history. But when UP Visayas Chancellor Clement Camposano began to speak, the tone shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough to make you listen a little more closely.

It did not feel like a speech meant to flatter. It felt more like someone laying things out carefully, almost gently, but without avoiding the difficult parts. And if you stayed with it long enough, you began to sense it—that quiet discomfort when you realize the thing you have trusted for years might already be changing beneath you.

He started with something simple, almost obvious: traditional media is no longer where most people live their daily information lives. Newspapers, radio, television—they used to hold things together. Not perfectly, but enough. There was a shared space, a common reference point. You could assume that people, more or less, were seeing the same things.

That is harder to say now.

These days, information moves differently. It does not wait to be sought out. It shows up—on your phone, in between messages, while you are half-paying attention. And what shows up for you is not the same as what shows up for someone else. It depends on what you click, what you linger on, what the system quietly learns about you over time.

Camposano said something that stayed with me longer than I expected: a newspaper assumes a community; a social media account assumes a network.

At first, it sounds like a small distinction. But the more you think about it, the more it stretches. A community carries a sense of responsibility—you write knowing people depend on you. A network is different. It revolves around the individual. What keeps you scrolling. What keeps you engaged. The center shifts, almost quietly, from “What do people need to know?” to “What will people respond to?”

You see it in small ways.

A teacher checks her phone before class and sees a set of headlines shaped by her past clicks. Another teacher, just across the hall, sees something else entirely. A student follows a thread that leads to another, then another, until what feels like “news” becomes something more personal, more selective. No one announces this shift. It just happens, gradually, until it feels normal.

There are studies that try to map this out—how algorithms curate content, how echo chambers form, how people begin to see only what reinforces what they already believe (Mugil & Kenzie, 2025). But you do not really need the study to notice it. You hear it in conversations that feel narrower than before. In disagreements that escalate faster. In how quickly outrage travels.

Camposano was careful not to turn this into a simple warning against technology. That would have been too easy. Instead, he treated it like something we are all already inside of. Technology is not the problem, he seemed to suggest. It is what we do with it. Or maybe more precisely, what it begins to do to us when we are not paying attention.

There is a certain honesty in that.

Because it is true—these same platforms that spread misinformation can also mobilize people. The same tools that distort can also expose. We have seen both. The tension is not going away.

And then there is the part that hits closer to home.

When CNN Philippines closed, it felt less like an isolated event and more like a signal. Not loud, but clear enough. If an institution like that can struggle to stay afloat, what does that say about the rest? Especially the smaller ones. The community papers that do not have the same resources, but often carry stories no one else bothers to tell.

That is where the question becomes more difficult.

Camposano did not suggest holding on to the old ways out of nostalgia. He did not frame this as a battle between print and digital. Instead, he talked about something more demanding: change your footing. Do not just move into digital space—belong there. Understand it. Work within it. Shape it, if possible.

That kind of shift is not just technical. It asks for something deeper. A change in how journalism sees itself.

And yet, even as he spoke about change, he drew a line around what must not change.

Truth. Accountability. Responsibility.

He did not linger on these words, but they did not need emphasis. In a space where information moves fast and not always carefully, these things matter more, not less. If everything becomes fluid, then something has to remain steady. Otherwise, the entire structure starts to feel unreliable.

This is where the story of Maria Ressa and Rappler quietly fits in.

Rappler did not succeed by pretending nothing had changed. It stepped into the digital space fully. It used the tools available. But it did not let those tools dictate its purpose. It held on to its role, even when that came with pressure, even when it was inconvenient.

It is not a perfect model. Nothing is. But it shows that adaptation does not have to mean compromise.

Closer to home, you see smaller versions of this.

A local paper that still covers a barangay issue no national outlet will pick up. A radio station that people trust because it has been there long enough to earn it. These are not outdated. They are rooted. And that matters, especially now, when trust feels harder to come by.

There is data that supports this—the Reuters Institute, for example, still finds higher trust levels in traditional media compared to social media. But even without the numbers, you feel it. In who people believe when something serious happens. In where they turn when they need something verified.

So the challenge is not as simple as replacing one with the other.

It is learning how to hold both, without losing your sense of purpose in the process.

For teachers, for students, for anyone trying to make sense of information today, this is not an abstract issue. It shapes how people think. What they believe. What they question—or do not question.

Camposano did not end with a neat solution. There was no checklist, no easy direction. Just a kind of clarity that settles slowly.

Some media institutions will not survive. That much seems likely. But the ones that do will not be the ones that resist change entirely, nor the ones that chase every trend.

They will be the ones that know, clearly enough, what they are there for—and are willing to adjust everything else around that.

And maybe that is where the real weight of the conversation sits.

Not in whether media is changing—we already know it is. But in whether those who shape it are ready to decide, quietly but firmly, what they refuse to lose along the way.

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a ‘student of and for life’ who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world that is grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views herewith do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.