BY HERBERT VEGO
TIME seems to have shrunk so fast that 40 years seem short. But that is how long Panay News has served readers since its first issue rolled off the press on April 7, 1981.
As I write down to write another article for another anniversary issue, I wish Danny Fajardo – the paper’s founder – were still alive to savor its success. It has been almost three years since he passed away at age 72 on September 9, 2018.
Though I at 71 this year am no longer officially connected with this paper, I welcomed the request of editor-in-chief Rex Maestrecampo to write anything for its 40th anniversary issue. I had been doing similar task in the past.
I wish I had kept a diary that would remind me of events that have unfolded during the passage of time. With such a diary, I could have retained more memories worth retelling.
I know I have almost always been repetitious in telling and retelling the paper’s history every first week of April. That is unavoidable. But if I dig deeper for nuggets from the lighter side, I am sure there are still plenty of them.
This time let me move farther back to the year 1965. I was in 4th year-high at the Antique National School in San Jose, Antique. Among my classmates were Edward Tordesillas and Maria Santillan, editor-in-chief and managing editor, respectively, of our school paper, The Madia-as. I was news editor.
Maria had been my classmate from grade five to first-year college.
Fifteen long years later in April 1981 when I had already been practicing my profession as freelance journalist in Manila for 11 straight years, I received a telegram from Maria (already married to Danny Fajardo), inviting me to edit a weekly tabloid they had put up in Iloilo City.
Serendipity, I thought, remembering that Maria and I had worked together as student journalists. How could I refuse someone who had been a classmate for seven straight years?
By then, her hubby Danny was no longer a stranger to me. I remembered having approached him for a full-page ad of his bus business for my defunct monthly magazine, Charm.
I figured out that since I had made it as a journalist in Manila, I could do it easier in my birthplace of Iloilo City.
It would be no walk in the park, though. I had to suppress the pain of loneliness arising from a break-up with my wife.
The paper began as a “squatter” in Danny’s insurance agency at Ong Bun Building on Ledesma Street. At that time, there were already three English weeklies here which were surviving on paid legal notices from the local courts of law. A new competitor would have to wait for one year before qualifying for the raffle of such ads.
On my first day in office, I found out that I would have to be the editor-in-chief because the pioneering editor, Jerry Taclino — who had “sold” him the idea of venturing into the newspaper business – had other matters to take care of. There I met for the first time Maria’s elder sister Victoria (now deceased), an English professor, who volunteered to help prepare editorial materials.
The Fajardo couple had to borrow income from their bus business – DJ Fajardo Lines — and from private lenders in order to fund the printing cost of the paper.
There were two judgmental barriers to break: first, the preference of local readers for Manila-based newspapers; and second, the absence of commercial advertisers.
No problem with the staff reporters. We wrote most of the news and relied as well on press releases from government agencies.
Sometimes, a scoop would just present itself, as it did one day when we were in Kalibo, Aklan for a business meeting. On learning that a rich widow nearby had been stabbed dead by a poor relative, Danny adjourned our meeting so we could cover the story.
I took pictures of the dead and used one of them on the front page. That particular issue sold out. Aha, we rightly discovered for ourselves, crime stories sell.
We experimented also with sexy pictures of movie stars occupying the front page. They were well-received. So we made it a point to have one on the front page every issue. Having pounded the entertainment beat for Manila newspapers and magazines for 11 years, I was well-stocked with those pictures.
Danny’s experience as insurance man proved handy in luring advertising/subscription personnel to our weekly briefings.
”Never be discouraged,” he would motivate them. “If you are good, you could sell refrigerator to the Eskimo.”
Turning those recruits into salesmen was easier said than done though.
In the second year of operation, having surpassed the one-year requirement of continuous weekly publication, we were allowed to publish legal notices. But our income could still not match our operational expenses. By then, we had opened branch offices in San Jose, Roxas City, Kalibo and Bacolod City. Each had a staff of two or three persons.
His “sacrifice” disabled Danny from replacing his old Lancer car.
His home in San Jose, Antique suffered months of power outage as “penalty” for failure to pay overdue bills to the Antique Electric Cooperative (ANTECO).
His mini-bus business plying the San Jose-Kalibo route was on the verge of insolvency.
And yet there was a time when Danny encouraged me to buy a brand-new motorcycle for my use, so I would not have to borrow his own.
After only a few months, however, I had to surrender that Kawasaki to the dealer because I could not catch up with the monthly installments out of my meager allowance.
He had no problem with his Suzuki motorcycle until a market vendor offered to buy it on pay-later agreement. He agreed. Alas, the buyer roared away and never came back to pay.
The Fajardo couple’s first three children — Ade, Wacky, Mai – were still in the elementary school in San Jose. The fourth, Strawberry, was a toddler. The 5th and 6th, Dan and David, were yet to come.
Other than our main office in the City, we rented a small room for residence on Quezon St.
With no printing press of our own, we made the rounds of printing presses in Iloilo City, always badgering for the lowest cost and the longest payment term. Our contributing reporters were doing bayanihan writing for a pittance or nothing at all.
Whenever I found time to visit my parents and siblings in Antique, almost always they would ask me to return to Manila. With an estranged wife and a baby boy to support financially, how could I go on working for an unstable newspaper?
“Patay News” and “Panay Noise” were among the cruel jokes they would tag our fledgling paper.
“Rome,” I appeased them with one of my favorite metaphors, “was not built in a day. Patience, perseverance and persistence will see us through.”
Danny made it a point to hold a journalism workshop with guest lecturers every first week of April to hone our writing skill.
We experimented on ways and means to win die-hard readers and found the best way to do it: Be an “alternative press” exposing the evils of the Marcos dictatorship. Even if President Ferdinand Marcos had already lifted martial law, no other local newspaper printed opinions critical of his regime.
We welcomed critical opinion writers as columnists. They were willing to fearlessly express their two cents’ worth for a song. One of them was the late Oscar Verdeflor, who would eventually run for mayor and win against incumbent Bing Leonardia in Bacolod City.
We also exposed graft and corruption in local government at the risk of getting sued for libel. There must have been more than a hundred of those cases filed in court.
All that paved the way for Panay News to lure both readers and advertisers. From a not too “weekly” frequency, the paper eventually morphed into a semi-weekly, tri-weekly and finally daily as advertising agencies came running to have their ads published.
With the gradual acquisition of its own printing press, the paper ceased patronizing commercial printers.
During the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, our Manila-based columnist, the late Sammy Julian, was elected president of the Malacañang Press Corps. It proved to be another image booster for this paper.
Hundreds of journalists have passed through the portals of Panay News in the past 40 years. All my contemporaries have either retired or gone to kingdom come. The old me does not know anymore most of its present staff.
But I am happy for them. Under the helm of the Fajardo children who have taken over its management, the paper has kept up with modern times, and is as available online nationwide as the Manila-based dailies./PN
