Today, the Manila Standard will mark an industry milestone—its 36th in the publication calendar—which will remind management and the staff of largely cultural and historic events the past nearly 40 years.
The date unquestionably puts a pin on the calendar beside the ruthlessly breathing deadline wall clock to remind the staff of something consequential to them and to their country.
The English language broadsheet, now rolling its presses in mid its fourth decade, debuted on Philippine newsstands in 1987, a day after the 6.7 intensity earthquake rumbled off the coast of Surigao del Norte which forced the government of Surigao City to declare a state of calamity.
The Manila Standard also reported on developments overseas, like armed conflicts in Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil War, disaster and accidents in Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara Province.
Many would perhaps raise the question “Why celebrate” the milepost?
It is a grim reality a large percentage of start-ups fail to move beyond start-up phase, with some researches suggesting only 37 percent of ‘micro’ businesses, or start-ups, exist after two years.
That means 63 percent fail to reach their third birthday, and that’s in normal times, not jabbed by difficulties that approximate the ruthlessness of the coronavirus 2019, among other humps the staff, working as a cohesive team, hurdled in the past three decades .
The Manila Standard staff will hopefully be thus forgiven for literally shouting out from the rooftop of the seven-story Universal Re building in Makati City—definitely they are not gloating, neither boasting.
Their smiles in the sun during their pictorial for the anniversary supplement conceptualize their gratitude to their readers and different publics for keeping the faith with them—glad, thankful, proud, vindicated, confident, strong, purposeful and reassured they have made it this far.
It has not been lost on today’s staff the vision of the founders of the Manila Standard who believed there was room for a newspaper “that seeks to present facts…to serve as an intellectual forum for ideas, whether clashing or complimentary, to test the limits of investigative reporting.”
The maiden editorial was unambiguous in the newspaper’s mission, which remains in the heartbeats of the publisher, the editors, and the other unsung newsroom heroes and their extensions offsite.
It said: To stand firm in the face of sly machinations of power brokers; to offer nuggets from the arts, which are necessary if we are to live as sensitive human beings; to tell the stories of the little day-to-day heroisms that, minus the benefits of publicity mills, go sadly unnoticed and unmarked.”
As we move with excitement, with excellence and experience beneath our industry belts, we pause and quickly look back at the different barometers from previous decades to measure the pluses and the minuses and decide on what to focus on in the years ahead.
Sans doubt, we know this is our team as we recognize the anniversary can well serve as a platform on which we can strengthen, if reinforce and redefine, our core values and culture as we stay the course in this rather very competitive industry.
Time as well to recognize the staff – who continue to strive for the five Cs: communication, camaraderie, commitment, confidence and coachability – and thank our clients and other stakeholders who continue to believe in us.
We see the Manila Standard as staying the course.