Challenges come when you’re making progress.
And admittedly, when you’re near the pinnacle, you’re bound to be hit up by the greatest roadblock.
The roadblock comes at your weakest, most vulnerable moment.
And also when most of the helpers are out.
Forgive me, my friends. I failed.
I’m going downhill again. I’m sorry.
Ei dude…
Seen my remorse?
Help me find it, will you? Please?
P.S. : I’m in big trouble.
Our thesis is going somewhere.
Approval’s inevitable. Yay!
(Great hypothesis=great thesis=great adviser=great expectations.)
I am going to be killed before we finish.
We deserve awards. 
Cartels.
Blindness.
Movement.
Their own.
MOVEMENTS BLIND ON THEIR OWN CARTELS.
Frickin’ double-standard.
Is something wrong when one of your new habits is to shout at any oncoming car the words: HIT ME! while crossing the street?
Hope to die.
I am writing a speech story, due today. And I am on the verge of a headache.
Oh how I hate speech stories.
“Good journalism… will help community papers and community journalists endure.”
This was veteran community journalist Pachico Seares’s answer to problems faced by community newspapers today, in a speech he delivered after receiving this year’s Gawad Plaridel for outstanding media practitioners by the University of the Philippines last July 4.
Addressing an audience of journalists, professors and students, the editor-in-chief of Sun.Star Cebu, the leading newspaper in the Visayas region, said the advent of new media and dwindling circulation are threatening community newspapers, which are already struggling for survival, to go out of print.
“The big papers based in country capitals are fretting if not jittery. Shouldn’t the much smaller local papers in the countryside panic?” Seares asked.
Seares said these problems force community journalists to sacrifice standards and values just to survive and to make enough money for the next issue.
“Bad reporting or editing, conflict of interest, or any other lapse of standards or ethics is set aside when the newsprint supplier and other creditors with unpaid bills are pounding on the publisher’s door,” he said.
But Seares held that the only solution for community journalism to survive is to uphold these values, because this would strengthen the newspaper’s kinship with the community it serves.
Taking his publication as an example, Seares said Sun.Star-Cebu has always believed in good journalism, so it eventually dominated the field in less than two years.
“The ultimate prize is public trust, which translates into public patronage and profit for our stockholders. Good journalism is good business and, given the results, our executive publisher Gina Atienza and other bosses in Sun.Star apparently agree,” Seares said.
Seares was the fifth recipient of the Gawad Plaridel, and was the first awardee based outside Metro Manila. Previous awardees were veteran journalist Eugenia Duran-Apostol, multi-awarded actress Vilma Santos, veteran broadcaster Fidela Magpayo and respected investigative journalist Cecilia Lazaro.
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FULL TEXT of the speech here. (A big thanks to Prof. Rachel Khan for the transcript.)
News about the awarding ceremony here and here and here.
And my favorite news spoof video here. (Not that it’s connected to Seares; it just removes headaches.)
Last Saturday, one of my friends said in a talk:
The number one enemy of the Church is ignorance.
And because I’m Mr. 99% quick thinking, and 1% mischievous ego, I immediately thought of a logical argument by connecting his statement to a well-known premise:
The number one enemy of the Church is ignorance.
Ignorance is bliss.
Therefore, the number one enemy of the Church is bliss.
This is funny, but invalid. I don’t know why though… I must brush up on my logic…
Geeky Yada-Yada