A tempest in a teacup has been stirred by someone who attributed to “dinosaurs” the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s purported bumbling journey to digital. He appeared to be singing a dirge for it in a chest-thumping report that was run on June 30, timed for the next-day management transition of the No. 1 newspaper from its corporate publisher to Inquirer Interactive, which puts out Inquirer.net. 

Some readers were given to believe it was the last day for them to hold the physical newspaper in their mortal hands before it became wholly digital. They rued the chest-thumper’s perceived “inaccuracy” on top of its patronizing tone. Indeed, on July 1 subscribers found their longtime waker-upper on their garage floor or sitting weightlessly on a frail potted plant (so thin it has become), having been, as usual, expertly flicked over the gate by their trusty delivery guy at first light.

But this business transition is not breaking news. Weeks ago the Inquirer announced the transfer of management, initially to its employees in a general assembly, and then to its readers on Page 1. 

On June 30 the Filipino journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Manny Mogato correctly raised the human factor in what he had thought was the total phaseout of the physical Inquirer: the exclusion of “excellent journalists” from the integrated staff. He was referencing the fact that not everyone had been invited to join the new workforce. Predictably, “the uninvited” are anxious about their livelihood, despite the announced provision of severance packages. (This arrangement is different from the early-retirement program offered years ago by the Inquirer management to its employees in an effort to streamline operations, among other things. At that time, another media outfit reported the program as an indication of the newspaper’s imminent decline, instead of situating the particulars in the context of the political and economic difficulties challenging the print media.) 

No one in and out of the new workforce is speaking on record about the personal and professional ramifications of this radical change, as though startled beyond words, or that what has transpired is too heartbreaking or, individually, too financially perilous, to discuss. Even the Inquirer employees’ cooperative appears shaken. The union remains silent as of this writing, hinting of a diminution of nerve in one of the strongest in the trade.

But hey, what’s that often said about the path to success? No pain, no gain.

The chest-thumper writer claims semi-insider status vis-à-vis his subject. He expresses happiness that the Inquirer has at last come to its senses in agreeing to Inquirer Interactive management and control; in the course of expounding on it, he projects himself as perched on a vantage point that includes being on rubbing-elbows mode with the captains of industry. A kibitzer will grant the plausibility of that claimed positioning, given his past stint as reporter-editor of Inquirer Business. (If the kibitzer were so inclined, the science of maintaining appropriate relationships with business sources would be an intriguing, albeit complicated, field to plumb.)

The report carries anecdotes on the man’s having had to endure the purported missteps and mistakes of Inquirer management on the slippery slope toward digital. He opens with having had to explain to a big guy why a “wildly popular” business gossip column could not be readily accessed, it being—horrors—now relegated behind a paywall. He describes his former employers as slow to come to grips with the prime purpose of survival in the era of the internet; he thinks them loath to ride the digital wave, too stubborn to comprehend accessibility, “too nice” to impose on the “dinosaurs” the supposed imperatives to avert extinction…

It gets tiresome. It sounds too much like the peroration of a pol seeking election, or click bait. The details on the aborted multibillion-peso deal read like an item in that business gossip column cum PR mill. He should show some respect. Many will still recall, among others, his former employers digging in their heels and facing down the instigator of a potentially crippling advertising boycott even as another, possibly wealthier, newspaper-owning family quickly folded at an initial threat.

And is this dude actually saying that the redoubtable Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, who led the newspaper when it was leading the national conversation, was a luddite who needed to be firmly set aright? Shame. LJM showed the way, whether in investigative reports, feature stories, Opinion pages. She was open to digital, but only if it maintains print’s excellence.

Sure, LJM and her team arrived at the office “way after lunch”—a sly dig in the ribs from one ignorant of production schedules. They were at work way into the night, hours after business cocktails had concluded, herself occasionally staying until the wee hours of the morning. It was a daily routine that knew no holidays and did havoc on family time. 

If indeed “dinosaur,” to connote “huge,” or “badass,” LJM was T. Rex.

But this is the online age, right? Fine. Veterans of the Inquirer are keeping tabs on its progress  and wondering what it will become. 

The chest-thumper is a mere study in self-promotion and a display of a curious, ultimately risible, absence of a sense of irony.