The Paper

I was just talking to my friend D the other day and I was telling her how much I miss working at a newspaper. Actually, it's just being in the newsroom that I miss, not the working part. You see, I just caught this gem of a movie, The Paper, on cable and it brought back all these memories of running after sources to get a quote, attending one press conference after another, and then churning out piece after piece of news reports.

I was a junior reporter at a business paper and every day, I had to turn in three stories, three well-written stories every single day! If a story wasn't good enough, my editors, who were mostly male, would return them to me with all sorts of weird markings. It was stressful at the start but once I got the hang of it, it became well, I wouldn't call it easy, so let's just say less stressful.

I was fortunate to have been assigned to a beat that was just bursting with all sorts of leads, the trade and industry beat. I would hang out at the press office of the Board of Investments and soon enough, there'd be a briefing of this or that office, or a press conference of this or that company. The daily grind trained me well.

But then, it wasn't all work. Whenever I'd find myself at our office, which is in a really gritty, nasty part of Manila, I'd grab a drink or two with some of my colleagues. We would park ourselves on wooden tables in a makeshift carinderia by the pier, and they would tell stories of their latest capers. Not everybody smoked but everybody drank. That's why I love newspaper people; they're a bunch of no-bullshitters. And I'm fortunate that some of them have become dear, dear friends.
See you Saturday, guys! :)






Here's a clip from The Paper with Michael Keaton before he donned the Batsuit and a really svelte Glenn Close. Of course, a lot of things have changed since then (I think they were using Wordstar in the movie; blast from the past!) but the spirit remains the same, I hope.