HAS it been 38 long years already?
That question reminds me of the cliché, “Time flies.”
But there’s another saying that says the contrary, “Time stays; we go.”
Thirty-eight years have passed by since the birth of Panay News on April 7, 1981. It has also been 38 years since I joined the paper as editor-in-chief at age 31, ending 11 years of beating deadlines for Metro Manila newspapers.
Today also marks the first time we miss our founder Daniel “Danny” Fajardo, who unexpectedly passed away on Sept. 9, 2018. By then, however, he had already turned over the management of this paper to his children.
Many others who had played significant roles for this paper in the past three decades had also gone ahead, namely Vicky Santillan-Primero, Rex Salvilla, Teddy Sumaray, and Sammy Julian, among others.
I can only cite Danny’s widow, my elementary-to-college classmate Maria, as a fellow survivor of the paper’s struggling first decade.
I guess not one of the men and women who make up today’s Panay News staff was around in that humble beginning.
The Fajardo couple’s three children – Ade, Wacky, Mai – were still in the elementary school. The fourth, Strawberry, was a toddler. The fifth and sixth, Dan and David, were yet to come.
This paper could have become what it is today even without my participation, which was providential.
I said so because Jerry Taclino, the first editor-in-chief, had quit after only two issues. Mary’s elder sister Vicky, a college professor, had temporarily taken over until I came along to man the paper’s editorial office at Ong Bun Building on Ledesma Street.
With no printing press of our own, we made the rounds of practically all printing presses in Iloilo City, always badgering for the lowest printing cost and the longest payment term. There was a time when Danny brought our entire manuscripts to Adver Press in Manila to economize on printing cost.
He broke the news that he had befriended an advertising executive named Allan Tumlos, who had agreed to provide us with his clients’ commercial ads. It was to be the beginning of the paper’s exposure to advertising agencies, which fortunately were on the lookout for well-read provincial newspapers to place their ads in. We had no choice but improve our editorial content – a feat almost impossible due to financial constraint. In fact, most of our contributing reporters were doing bayanihan writing for a pittance or nothing at all.
Meanwhile, his family in San Jose, Antique was enduring dark nights after the Antique Electric Cooperative (Anteco) had disconnected their power line.
Meanwhile, my relatives were egging on me to return to any of my past employers in Manila. With a wife and a baby boy to support, how could I go on working for an unstable newspaper?
“Rome,” I appeased them with one of my favorite quotes, “was not built in a day.”
I chose to bear the pain of bidding my motorcycle goodbye while two men were wheeling it out of my possession for failure to pay three installments.
But why should I complain? The big boss himself was hard-up.
We were cocksure, however, of turning adversity into prosperity by projecting ourselves as an “alternative press” exposing the evils of the Marcos dictatorship. Even if Marcos had already lifted martial law, it was still a game of “hide and seek”.
To make the long story short – thank God – our gamble has paid off. Panay News has morphed from an irregular weekly into the only real daily newspaper (including Sunday) in Western Visayas. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
