Why Cebu journalists rock

Here’s why journalists in Cebu are sometimes way ahead of their counterparts in Manila and other regions in improving their craft and their interaction with their audiences: anybody who has a complaint against journalists or newspapers can file it through a website put up by the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC).

The website, developed by Sun.Star’s Max Limpag, also has a list of journalists working for each of the member newspapers.

I’m always amazed at the way Cebu journalists are often united in issues such as press freedom, ethics, and accountability. Their Press Freedom Week celebrations are unique in that they don’t only hold parades but also workshops and seminars on press freedom and journalism (of course, there’s always the beer and the partying).

Their intensely competitive newspapers (Sun.Star, Cebu Daily News and The Freeman) are some of the best in the country. One of the reasons for that, I think, is the fact that Cebu editors — like Sun.Star’s Pachico Seares, who sort of mentored me after he hired me as the first editor of Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro in 1995 — do not stop learning and do not hesitate to adapt to new trends and technologies.

Perhaps most important of all, these editors are not full of themselves. Unlike many editors in Manila that I know, Cebu editors are not perched on some kind of journalistic pedestal. Their reporters can still relate to them, even share beer with them. They don’t hesitate to mentor the younger journalists just as they don’t hesitate to discipline them when they breached journalistic ethics.

In many Manila newsrooms, there’s this wall that divides editors and reporters. You rarely feel that in Cebu’s newsrooms.

And now, the even higher and thicker wall that separates the press from the public is being torn down in Cebu by efforts such as the CCPC.

Kudos!