Eugenia Duran Apostol, “Eggie” to most, had long bowed out of newspapering. Still, news of her passing on Sept. 13 shook the media landscape and beyond, on the same day marked by the departure of her former sports editor Recah Trinidad, likewise long out of circulation, whose writing enriched not only sports reportage and commentary but also prose and poetry. But it was only illness, not erasure, that felled them.
Memory is being refreshed and recharged, shining a light on Eggie Apostol’s life work that approaches the dimensions of legend now that the era of big print newspapers has ended. In the process, the newspaper she founded in the most perilous of times, which was a major factor in a high point in recent Philippine history, and which continues to carry her name as founding chair, now elicits fresh attention.
Eggie Apostol put up the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an old building in Port Area, Manila. The country was in crisis; a simmering public restiveness under Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship had reached a boil in the shocking assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on Aug. 21, 1983. The media barely covered the killing and the mass mourning that followed, including the millions-strong funeral procession that witnessed or escorted the former senator’s mortal remains from Quezon City to Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque—except for Eggie Apostol’s magazine Mr&Ms, Joe Burgos’ newspapers We Forum and Malaya, and Rod Reyes’ fortnightly magazine Celebrity.
Mr&Ms, a weekly magazine unapologetically devoted to lifestyle features and froth, issued Mr&Ms Special Editions that ran reports and photographs on Ninoy Aquino’s assassination and the inquiries established to look into it, the staggering hidden wealth of the dictator’s family, and other political issues that the public could not find in the dominant media. But it soon became clear to Eggie Apostol that these special editions, although wildly successful in street sales and pass-on readership, were not sufficient, and could hardly quench the public thirst for information on the murderous weight of martial law, its brutalities, and the passionate opposition to it that the controlled and ultimately self-censoring press would not, could not, run.
‘Unmade bed’
Enter the Inquirer. Striking in its scrappy style and the famously messy “unmade bed” layout of its front page, it quickly made a name for itself in its coverage of, among other events and issues, the then-daily protest actions and the “snap” presidential election that the strongman called to put the “housewife” Corazon “Cory” Aquino in what he thought was her place. She had become his nemesis—a turning point that the newspaperwoman in Eggie Apostol swiftly noted.
The Inquirer saw the light of day on Dec. 9, 1985, a little more than 40 years ago but its pioneer employees, including those who now put out CoverStory, still recall the breathless, uncertain times. What happened on the first night of operations never fails to crop up each anniversary. A power outage had the desk editors working on copy by candlelight, with Eggie Apostol delighted and beaming even if the first issue looked to be put to bed way past midnight.
Payday was a moveable feast, occurring when funds from street sales came in, in wads of ₱2 bills worn out from the constant changing of hands and occasionally smelling of the fish market. But the atmosphere was fragrant of possibilities even if the crowded newsroom was less than poetic: Typewriters and even chairs were in short supply, so that reporters rushing in from pounding the beat to write their stories often had to wait their turn while desk editors took dictation by phone from correspondents on field, grappling with regional accents coming in through the static.
In the foreword of the book launched to mark the Inquirer’s 30th anniversary, Eggie Apostol wrote of how she hocked her engagement ring to push her young and “very beleaguered” newspaper over the financial hump, to give it time to gain strength.
Thus did they persevere. The Inquirer emerged at the critical moment, always at risk of reprisal from the dictatorship but boldly serving as a necessary instrument for conveying the information that Filipinos so urgently needed to guide them in their actions—for example, the walkout of the Commission on Elections’ computer technicians who observed irregularities in the snap election’s vote count, or the rally held at Rizal Park to protest the poll machinations—the size of the crowd beggaring the usual descriptions of “huge,” “mammoth,” etc. In that rally, Cory Aquino calmly aired her powerful call for boycott that pushed Marcos-crony companies, products, even established newspapers, to the brink of ruin…
And it came to pass: the historic four-day People Power Revolt on Edsa in 1986 that started on Feb. 23 and ended with the Marcoses’ flight from Malacañang and into eventual exile, and Cory Aquino’s inauguration as president. The Inquirer banner story that announced the fall of strongman rule was titled simply: “It’s all over; Marcos flees.”
Remember. We must all remember, and continue to tell the story of how Eggie Apostol and her newspaper were part of the wave that made possible the return of democracy to the Philippines, that allowed the country to gain the admiration of other nations, and that inspired similar bloodless upheavals in the world, such as the “Velvet Revolution” in what was then Czechoslovakia. (That justice largely remains elusive is evident and indicates the enormousness and complexity of the current battleground and the task still at hand—a task their elders have turned over to the young.)
Truth at the center
When in 2006 the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation board of trustees recognized the Inquirer founding chair for journalism, literature and creative communication arts, they said: “For democracy to work, truth must be in the public domain.” They noted her “courageous examples in placing the truth-telling press at the center of the struggle for democratic rights and better government in the Philippines.”
Her awards were naturally plentiful. In 2001, she received from the International Center for Journalists in Washington the Knight International Press Fellowship Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, the University of the Philippines recognized her with its Gawad Plaridel for excellence in journalism. She received similar awards from the Ateneo de Manila University and her alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas. And in the same year she received her RM Award, Time Magazine named her and her editor in chief Letty Jimenez Magsanoc among its “Asian Heroes.”
On her turf, in the Inquirer newsroom, she instituted safe space for reporters and other employees, establishing guardrails against sexual harassment. To improve the practice of the profession, she made sure that mentoring was performed, and for good measure encouraged the mentoring of the mentors.
What a long way she had come from her early days editing the women’s pages of the pre-martial law The Manila Chronicle and The Manila Times, where she thought nothing of lunching on a sandwich at her desk to keep the workflow going. Her industry was ever-present: She also put up the tabloid Pinoy Times (Vic Tirol, publisher), another bestseller that ran investigative reports on then President Joseph Estrada.
“When young writers ask me for some pointers,” she once wrote, “here’s what I tell them: To be beholden to any news source is tragedy for a reporter. To be beholden to any advertiser is tragedy for a newspaper. To act like puppy dogs to public relations officers makes the editorial staff lose confidence in the editorial desk. The main job of the newspaper is to be a watchdog, not to be anybody’s lap dog.”
Eggie Apostol’s life work provides lessons for those who mean to meet journalism’s demands and to uphold its standards: a delicate, exacting task in these days of mass deception and astonishing greed. There’s much grief over her passing but her story is on record, offering much to examine and hold in high esteem. Whence comes such another? CS
