long live, philippine daily inquirer
it's the end of an era as we know it
Dear friends, this is an out-of-the-usual post actually. We were in Seoul in April to celebrate C’s birthday + watch Coldplay with TWICE + catch Le Sserafim’s concert at Incheon—I expected my next entry here to be about that, and I already have been arranging my notes to that end, but before we get to that entry, please let me get this out of the way first. -K
The Powers That Be at the Inquirer have announced that they are integrating their Print and Digital operations effective July 1, 2025, with the digital company Inquirer Interactive, which is on top of Inquirer.net operations, being the surviving entity. As the memo itself says, several (read: not all) of PDI’s current editorial team have been invited to join the management of the integrated multimedia newsroom, and that affected employees “shall receive severance or separating benefits” in accordance to law or the Collective Bargaining Agreement currently existing between PDI Management and the PDI Employees Union.
In a follow-up clarificatory article, Inquirer emphasized that there will be ‘no halt in publishing the broadsheet’ amid the integration, and that several members of PDI’s editorial team have “have expressed their commitment to maintain uninterrupted newsroom operations, uphold the INQUIRER’s editorial standards, and drive the success of the integration.”
With management holding face-to-face general assemblies on May 2—incidentally right in the middle of Labor Day and World Press Freedom Day—news spread not just on social but from friend to friend. The general mood is that of shock, sadness and anxiety, especially for those who would essentially be out of their jobs by June 30. This, too, in the middle of crucial coverages, including but not limited to the elections, succession at the Vatican, and whatever political machinations are underway related to Duterte at the ICC.
Incidentally, this month marks my 20th year in the workforce. I joined the Inquirer fresh out of college, ostensibly to fulfill the terms of my Inquirer Scholarship. Even as I studied Journalism in college, when I first got to the paper, it became clear to me that I had no idea what I was in for—that I would have to learn on the job, and absorb as much as I could while working in a newsroom that was, in all honesty, the best in the country, bar none. I would never get tired of saying I spent the first decade of my career learning under journalism giants and the leadership of Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, and participating in the Inquirer’s coverage of Philippine history from 2005 to 2016.
When I entered Inquirer, it was celebrating its 20th year. I was there when it marked its 25th and its 30th, helping churn out anniversary issues and holding anniversary projects. Now, as it approaches its 40th… well. These changes are borne out of realities facing any 40-year-old—life is hard, and it is much harder for broadsheets. A fact not just in this country but anywhere in the world.
Print has always been dying. Talks of converged newsrooms date as far back as 15 years ago. I have seen iterations upon iterations—physical, logistical, digital, conceptual—of initiatives to future-proof the premier newsroom of the Philippines. I have seen the Editorial floor at the old Yague and Mascardo building get rearranged and remodeled time and time again to accommodate updated workflows, to host bigger meetings, to house dotnet colleagues and all that jazz. And I have been out of Inquirer for eight years.
When I got to talk to some friends and former teammates—people I literally grew up with as a career person—among the questions we asked each other was how did we get here. Sure, the surging costs, especially for paper hence print. Sure, the political climate under the back-to-back Duterte and Marcos administrations (honestly chicken and egg). Sure, the changing readership habits, the constantly dwindling attention span, the pivot to shorter, faster, quicker ways of ingesting/digesting current events. Sure, the pandemic.
But in the end, we kept going back to that fateful day in 2015 when LJM died, and with her her original vision for the Inquirer as newspaper of record. Call a spade a spade to make peace with it, which was what I did when I left in end 2016.
But I know the answer to this question is really the least of the concerns of the people who will be affected by the merger—the statement may gloss over the jobs that will definitely be lost, but no amount of sugarcoating is about to change the fact that many of my friends—many of them among veterans who have kept the paper afloat through its most trying times, working excellently both in Editorial and support positions—are facing uncertain futures and will likely be out of their jobs in a couple of months.
They say there really is no money to be made in Journalism—that if you had any plans to get rich, you’re better off in another field entirely. But for many of my friends who have stayed to hold the line, to be able to churn out the paper day after day, in the face of regular tragedy, crisis and what-not, Journalism is a calling that goes beyond money-making.
This is not sustainable, of course. People have families to feed and kids to send to school, and health issues to spend for—name it. The business model for news has long been broken and coopted by sectors that benefit from the industry being perpetually maimed. I don’t have a recommendation, the same way none of the leaders that have gone before me had any lasting solutions.
I don’t know how else to put it, but from a now-outsider’s point of view watching the heartbreaking unfolding of history, for a paper that rose out of the ashes of Martial Law and the EDSA People Power Revolution to have to fold right smack in the middle of the second Marcos administration—you can’t tell me this isn’t some long game coming into fruition.
What a pity. What a loss.
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