Newspaper's most difficult job

What is the most difficult job in community newspapering?
The most rewarding experience in working in the community press is that one gets to experience practically all aspects of the operations.
It is different from working in a national newspaper because it is more compartmentalized.
Working in a community newspaper one does everything. It is not surprising if the editor is the news gatherer, the news writer, the proofreader, the layout editor, the marketing executive, the sales executive, even the printer.
In my boyhood I was exposed to community newspaper business. So I got to experience the different types of jobs in this business.
Long before I even landed in a desk job of news transcriber, I worked the manual labor.
The newspaper was then printed through letterpress. Desktop publishing was a yet a thing of the future at that time.
I was a newsboy, I folded the papers ready for letterpress impression. I knew how to operate the Minerva.
The Minerva is a brand name of what perhaps is the equivalent now of the Hewlett Packard laser printer.
The Minerva was a monster of a machine.
Although operating the Minerva was a dangerous job, for me it wasn’t the most difficult.
The most difficult job in the community newspaper operation is the delivery of the paper to the homes of subscribers.
There were subscribers of our newspaper to whom we had to deliver personally.
As a teenager, I took on this job.
When everything was printed at dawn of Sunday, the delivery begins after all the pages were “inserted” (manually).
I rode in a motorcycle, and together with a companion we started the delivery at 4 a.m.
This job perhaps is nothing different from delivering the bread, or delivering the mails to the homes of recipients or addressees.
This is a very tiresome job. It is physically demanding. It was because we had to deliver the newspapers to subscribers from dawn, which was very cold, until after noontime, which was very hot.
I had to be directly exposed to sunlight most of the time. I had to wear sweaters even under the scorching heat just to protect myself from direct sun exposure. I wore a baseball cap.
At the end of the day, I would feel really exhausted. This job will really test the limits.
I feel for people whose job is having to be exposed to direct sunlight.
Newsboys, the mail men, delivery boys, ice cream vendors, or evenperhaps the Mormons…they have one of the most difficult jobs.
If you work inside an office in a building, away from the punishing heat, be thankful.
You have no reason to complain.

Newsboy days

At age five, I sold newspapers. But it was only a single newspaper I sold, The Negros Chronicle which was published by my father.

The Negros Chronicle first hit the streets less than a year after the declaration of martial law. The Chronicle's maiden issue was on June 12, 1973.

When martial law was declared, Marcos closed down all media. A little later, the government allowed newspapers back into circulation. In each province, one newspaper was allowed to publish.

From being jobless, my father suddenly had a source of income to feed his family when he was granted a permit to publish a weekly community paper. During the days of martial law, one had to get a government permit to publish a newspaper.

We lived in a two-bedroom apartment along Silliman Avenue. If I am not mistaken, the monthly rent at that time was P250. It was right at the heart of Dumaguete City's commercial district, which was at that time, not really commerical.

Dumaguete was a sleeping city, but was largely known because of Silliman University.
It was not a long walk for me and several other kids to sell the newspaper. Just a few meters away, we were already at the corner of Silliman Avenue and Alfonso XII Street, the city's main intersection.

There, we sold newspapers. We were young salesmen. Kids from the neighborhood also sold newspaper like us.

The newspaper was sold at fifteen centavos. Those days, one centavo coins were legal tender.

In selling newspapers, I learned that I must prominently display the banner headline so potential buyers can see what the week's main story was. With that, I could perhaps close a sale.

At five years old, my selling newspapers on the streets was more of a training.
At the end of the day, newspaper is a business as it is a vocation.
To make the paper survive, one had to know how to sell the newspaper.
The most basic way to sell a newspaper, is to sell them on the streets.

Because of my early experience as a newsboy, I am always concious that newsboys are a vital component of a newspaper's operations.

The Voice of America: its impact on my young life

The first time I learned about the Voice of America (VoA), it was a source of news around the world. I was to monitor the Voice of America, record the news, and transcribe it. At a young age of thirteen, that was what the Voice of America was about.
I had to use the "short-wave" band of a more sophisticated radio to listen to VoA. It wasn't on the AM band.
So before I was even taught transcription work, I had to learn to properly tune the radio to VoA. If not tuned properly, one would hear shrill mono-sound that would warp even with the slightest and finest move I make on the tuner whether clockwise or counter clockwise. Tuning to the VoA was always a "delicate" affair for me, I remember.
When I listened to VoA, everything else in my surroundings had to be quiet. Any other sound was a distraction.
It was an age when access to television---much less t.v. news---was sorely limited. The Philippines was under a dictatorship, and everything was controlled by the government. In the province, virtually there was no t.v. to tune in.
I was instructed to record the Voice of America "Special English" version which broadcast every 8:30 p.m. This would used be for transcription.
The Special English news was delivered turtle-paced. It was as if the newscaster had taken a sleeping pill. But actually, it was broadcast to countries where English wasn't the main language facility.
Every night I tuned in to VoA I began to realize it wasn't just a material where news is gathered, monitored and transcribed.
Sometimes, the Voice of America would broadcast news about the Philippines. It was fresh. The news was unlike the regular news from the government Philppine News Agency. Even as a boy, I could already tell objective news from heavily slanted news.
I listened to objective news about the Philippines from the Voice of America.
The Manila radio stations couldn't be heard in our province. There was "Newswatch" of the government's Channel 9 with Harry Gasser as the newsreader every 7 o'clock. The news stories were about the beauty of the Philippines. You watch the news and you feel like there was nothing wrong in the country. Everything was rosy. That was how it was under an era of repression.
The news coming from the Voice of America was also intended for consumption in repressed countries that longed for free information.
Aside from the Philippines, there were countries in Asia that were (still are) not under deomocratic governments like China, Vietnam, North Korea.
It was the VoA that delivered news as it should be.
The Voice of America is the Voice of Freedom in the Pacific.
My father had a friend Max Abellaneda He was also a "media-man" in terms of height.
Max listened to nothing else but the VoA. This man was updated of the latest political developments around the world.
Those were the early days of the Reagan era. And the mortal enemy of the U.S. was the Soviet Union.
In many ocassions, uncle Max gave us scoops because he practically listended to VoA 24/7. In this sense, Max was a true media man.
Nowadays, I do not tune in to VoA as much, mainly because of the more accessible international news sources like CNN and Fox News.
But still I switch the television to the VoA channel.
And when I do, it brings back a lot of memories of my younger days.

My first desk job: a news transcriber

As a little boy, I grew up when the Philippines was under the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos. I do not remember much of martial law. It was lifted in 1981, but Marcos had iron clad control of practically all vital media institions in the country.
I grew up in media. My grandfather set up one of the country's oldest community papers in Bohol province. It has chronicled Bohol's history since 1956, fifty golden years ago.
My father set up what would be the second-generation media outfit in Negros Oriental. The Negros Chronicle was established in 1973. It branched out to the airlances in 1980 by opening the pioneer FM station in the province.
For the community media outfits, other than local news, information depended on those fed in Manila. Most of the time it was controlled by the Marcos government.
I could not discern this of course at that time as I was only a fresh teenager. But now that I am in my mid-thirties, I can recall and see the vast distinction the reportage of today's media outfits and those under Marcos.
I was exposed to many facets of news ---news gathering, news monitoring, news writing, news transcription ---at a very early age.
I was only thirteen when I was given my first formal job as a news transcriber (or transcriptionist?) for my father's newspaper and radio. But we called ourselves "news transcribers".
I transcribed the news for many years.
During those days, the main tools of a transcriber were a typewriter and a tape recorder and a radio. It wasn't just any tape recorder. It was this heavy duty Panasonic recorder/player that had a sturdy facility of 'rewind' and 'forward' buttons, that had no built in radio receiver. It was rectangular in shape, perhaps the size of a cell phone box. I remember we had a black tape recorder and an Olympia typwriter.
One of the best trainings in news transcription is the news from the Voice of America or VoA (I will write my "VoA experience" in a separate article).
It had a special edition where news was delivered in "Special English."
Special English news was delivered slower by the newscaster. It was meant to be heard by people in countries which really did not have English as the main language. The VoA's special Engligh version was good for neophytes in transcription.
I would record the "special English" version of the VoA every 8:30 p.m. At 9:00 p.m. I would begin pounding the rickety trypewriter.
I quickly became very fast with the typewriter.
Then later I could transcribe the English news delivered in regular-speed English.
After graduating in transcription, I moved on to news translation.
When the new government of Cory Aquino took over, the material for our national news was Noli De Castro's TV Patrol.which was delivered in Tagalog.
So it became a different process altogether.
I would play a portion of Noli De Castro's news. Then I would stop the tape recorder. I would embark on a thought process of translating his Tagalog news in my mind. When I begin typing, it would already be my English translation of Noli's news.
This was a much slower process than ordinary transcription. But years of doing it improved my skills.
Another major source of national news at that time were the Cebu radio stations like DYRC and DYHP. But this was delivered in Visayan language.
I would have to translate the Visayan news delivery before typing the substance in English.
I became quite good a transcriber that I could already transcribe the VoA news almost without pressing the 'stop' and 'rewind' buttons anymore, particularly the special English news editions.
I was very thankful I learned this skill. It has been very helpful in my required typing classes and later in my career.
I became very fast in typewriting that I was exempted in my college typing class.
I would feel embarrassed in my typing class because my classmates would stare at how I used the typewriter.
Some of my classmates pressed the typewriter keys like they were trying to kill insects with their fingers.
Those tanscribing days I cannot forget. I now use the computer at work. But even as technology tools have advanced, the skills of yesterday are still as useful.