Uriel Quilinguing .
Last of Two Parts
THE word bureaucratic has a negative connotation. It is synonymous to red-tape, an organization characterized as having multi-layered systems, complicated rules and complex processes—often attributed to government agencies—at the expense of efficiency and common sense.
In a way, Mindanao Gold Star Daily’s business and editorial operations, for three decades now, has been bureaucratic. But the word gained positive meanings after the paper started opening bureau offices, first in nearby cities and eventually in other strategic urban centers in Mindanao as well.
The idea of bureau offices came two years after the daily paper’s maiden issue. At that time, businessman turned newspaper publisher Ernesto “Toto” Chu was unaware the establishment of bureau offices would eventually change Gold Star Daily of Cagayan de Oro to an island-wide Mindanao Gold Star Daily.
After the first anniversary, Gold Star Daily reporters and photojournalists found news coverages outside Cagayan de Oro exciting. Aside from routinary crime and political stories, there were times they cannot find earth-shaking stories from Cagayan de Oro and got bored.
Meanwhile, what the publisher knew then was that no daily newspaper could survive out of newsstand sales, paid subscriptions, judicial and extra-judicial notices and occasional advertisements from business firms. That keeping the paper’s regular number of pages and printed copies was unwise to the increased production costs; prices of newsprint, films and ink continue to go up. Hence, every 15th and 30th day of the month was his perennial headache although there was no instance pay envelopes were delayed.
While the situation was always trying to make both ends meet, journalists from cities and provinces of Northern Mindanao and Caraga regions started sending news stories and exclusive photographs for publication. They would request editions of the paper for their news sources’ complementary copies. They became the paper’s contributors, stringers and correspondents, some of them eventually assumed as heads of the bureau offices.
It was farthest from the publisher’s mind then that having bureau offices would eventually distinguish Gold Star Daily from Metro Manila-based dailies, capitalizing on their nationwide circulations to lure advertisers. Copies that were sent to the provinces are considered sold and there was no need for publishers, or those in the paper’s business management, to know how the daily was circulated and read.
Metro Manila-centric dailies do not mind at all if significant events in the provinces are contained in the inside pages and lumped in news roundups since only those events in the national capital matter. All their staff writers cover only those in Metro Manila cities, leaving the regions and provinces to correspondents.
Mindanao Gold Star Daily bureaus changed that mindset; that editors of the paper should evaluate news from other areas in Mindanao the same way as those from Cagayan de Oro, that journalists in the field know better since they know their sources than the paper editors, and that editors can directly validate and verify the news from the field by directly contacting the writers.
Beyond editorial concerns, where bureaus “collect and distribute” information in the field, these became agencies of the publisher for business transactions, circulation and subscription of the paper. Mindanao Gold Star Daily has been visible, as the island’s widely circulated newspaper, because of those who man the bureau offices.
The paper, through the bureau offices, is recognized by judicial courts in the raffling of notices, by schools in the training of their campus journalists and internship for communication students, by government agencies, be it regional or local, in the publication of their invitation to bids and legislative measures, and private sectors’ partner in the hiring of personnel, to promote products and services, as well as in delivery of their corporate social responsibility projects.
Mindanao Gold Star Daily also maintains marketing offices in Metro Manila and Cebu cities but these are unlike the “all-in-one” bureau offices that exist in Mindanao’s key cities.
All these in proper perspective because of the “bureaucratic” way Mindanao Gold Star Daily’s day-to-day publishing business and operations are being managed while editorial standards were being adhered to in the past three years.
(Uriel C. Quilinguing is a past president of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club and former editor-in-chief of this paper.)
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