The first Baguio media pigeonhole was on the wall of Jimmy Tong’s Session Café, that favorite watering hole near the corner of the city’s inclined main street. The café, a landmark of Baguio’s formative years, is no longer there, taken over by a fast-food chain. The present crop of local journalists now repairs to Chongloi’s Luisa’s Café where a smaller vertical drop box hangs on the wall beside the staircase.   

The original drop box could accommodate all kinds of press, "praise," and "please" releases  including those from politicians. Anybody in the media could have a niche, as you then could count the practitioners. Without having to organize another press corps, anybody interested got to serve as president of the Baguio Press Club, or, later, the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club. 

Today, over a hundred claim legitimacy to the practice of community journalism here. They sport all sorts of media membership cards, as if they’re out to execute a parade and review at the Burnham Park grounds. Aside from the BCBC, they have organized into the Cordillera PNP Press Corps, Baguio PNP Press Corps, Tourism Press Corps, Mining Press Corps, Cordillera Videographers and Photographers Press Corps, Camp John Hay Press Corps, and Benguet Press Corps.

Some of the surviving veterans claim competition was keener then. Occasionally, enterprise was inspired by a press release in the pigeonhole. An early bird trying to fix a hangover with coffee laced with brandy might scoop out all the copies, rewrite the story from somewhere, feed it to the desk, and then go see a movie.  Later in the afternoon, he would reappear at Session Café to share it with the rest – way past the deadline.

Powered by alcohol, evening conversations in the waterhole normally turned spirited, ricocheting from one topic to another. During one of those regular sprees, somebody swore crunched garlic, rubbed on balding pates, was a sure-fire cure for receding hairlines. Another turned attention to a tiny, winged lizard that had the uncanny ability to hop from one pine tree to another.

No one took note or listened, except Gus Saboy, then with the Philippine News Service. Baguio journalists often talk at the same time, especially when alcohol has already sharpened the brain and loosened the tongue – or the other way around. So Gus scooped them all that time with his boxed front-page features about Baguio’s flying dragons and the potential of garlic as a cure for hirsute problems. 

Enterprise was the name of the game then. Radio reporters broke developing news by the hour and correspondents followed these up for the national dailies and the few Sunday weeklies.

Today, it’s sometimes the reverse, as some don’t do news coverage. What you read in the papers, you hear it read verbatim by an FM radio anchorman the following              morning, sometimes without acknowledgement of the source. The late George Jularbal noted, too, that they no longer report the news; they shout it.

Some of the remaining veterans sometimes see the need to remind some of the younger ones about ethics, about keeping in step with the guideposts for responsible journalism. The venerable Sinai Hamada spelled these out on the masthead of the Baguio Midland Courier,which he and his brother Oseo founded in 1947. It’s about being fair, fearless, friendly, and free.

Sinai, who also edited The Philippine Collegian student paper of the University of the Philippines, lived up to the standards he set. He wrote fearlessly with form and substance about issues in the Cordillera, some of which remain issues of today. His first editorial focused on the sad state of the Halsema national highway that, until now, has yet to link these mountain provinces together.

With its dependence on letterpress technology, newspapering then was a slow process, extremely tedious, laborious, and stressful “ mentally and physically. Stories had to be typed on the creaking Underwood, composed with hand-picked letter fonts or lead-cast on linotype, bedded, and then ran.

One time, as I was told, Sinai napped while writing his editorial. No one in the staff dared to rouse him, so the printer did. The editor, who was known for his wry humor, reviewed what he wrote, punched a single key, and pulled out the manuscript. It had been complete for sometime, except for the last period.

Sinai’s professionalism inspired G. Bert Floresca, Ben Rillera, Juan Valdez, Virgilio Bautista, Gabriel Pawid Keith Sr., and others who joined him in the Courier. Sinai eventually yielded this paper to his son Steve, and with a younger staff the likes of Oswald Alvaro, my brother Joe, and, later, Abe Belena.

Steve, who gave up a promising career in advertising, came home thinking he was ready to take over. He, however, repeatedly saw his old man crumpling and sending his initial reports to the wastebasket. He learned fast, developing his own style yet keeping the personality of the Courier as established by his father. 

Oswald never took notes and wrote by hand and from memory. His news breakers seemed innocuous but his follow-ups turned more controversial as they came, slowly developing into full-blown exposés. With ease, Abe, the only honest-to-goodness journalism graduate then, turned seemingly trivial information into feature gems that matched the quality of the outputs of Peppot Ilagan, Domcie Cimatu, Jimmy Laking, and Joel Dizon who were then writing for the Gold Ore.

Brother Joe disdained flourish and embellishment, always maintaining sentence brevity and objectivity. He started out at The Mountaineer and later joined Oswald, Peppot Ilagan, and Willy Cacdac in the Focus, a weekly magazine hatched by Des Bautista and edited by G. Bert. Like other second-generation practitioners, he doubled in radio news reportage, with Willy and George on dzHB, now dwHB.

G. Bert one time apparently didn’t read Joe’s story but, for one reason or another, directed Peppot to re-write it. Peppot copied it as is and submitted. “Kastoy a ti agsurat, Joe,” G. Bert said, slapping the manuscript with his hand. 

Steve was my editor at the Courier from 1980 until 1985, when he resigned and set up the Baguio-Cordillera Post.  I had to follow him, as we were so close. We argued a lot over a lot of things, none of which we could recall even after he passed on this month in 2004.

What I remember was that time, work stress, and gin lulled us both to sleep on our desks, before we could proofread his editorial. We woke up to a nightmare at dawn. The piece, set up in linotype, was garbled beyond comprehension, but ran nonetheless by the printer, who swore he did try to wake us up. 

Resetting the lead slugs to proper order and re-running 8,000 copies back-to-back would earn the ire of Lakay Oseo over the waste and that of then Benguet Gov. Ben Palispis over having his copy late. 

I couldn’t look at Steve. More so when the printer tried to reassure him with a Job’s comforter: “Saan ka kadi nga aburido unay, Steve. Ammom met nga awan agbasbasa ti editoryal.”

Proofreading improved when Steve took in Freddie Conchu and younger reporters Nathan Alcantara and Leslie Hernandez. Freddie worked with the Baguio Water District but concentrated on issues affecting the Benguet Electric Cooperative. Nathan was assigned to the Baguio beat while Leslie covered Benguet.

When a town mayoralty bet shoved a fifty-peso bill into Leslie’s pocket during an assigned interview, the cub reporter immediately handed it back. The political wannabe returned it. Leslie later had to give up on the exchange. He couldn’t sleep and came to me for advice.

We repaired to a canteen where I ordered snacks and then listened to his tale of woe over the bribe. Later, I advised him to settle the tab, which equaled the problematic amount.

I told him he should feel better, as my system had just imbibed half of his burden.  Don’t interview him anymore, I added. 

Steve and I grappled with shadows that had nothing to do with cash. He would rib me whenever somebody would ask how I was related to Joe. I would answer it’s the other way around, that Joedax is a brother of Mondax. It was easier for me to be in the shadow of my brother than for Steve to be known as a son of the respected lawyer and editor. As Frank Cimatu, one of the best among today’s feature writers, noted, Steve tried to climb Mt. Sinai.

Domcie, who happens to be the elder brother of Frank, joined the Courier after Steve and I left to put up the Post. Unlike us, he didn’t stay long but got separation compensation. Eliral Refuerzo, who now publishes The Baguio Reporter, had his own stint with the Courier. So did March Fianza and Alfred Dizon, now the editor of the Northern Philippine Times.

Our training in the Courier allowed us to move on, encouraged to contribute to the national dailies and to start crafting columns. March went on to write for the Philippine Star while Alfred joined the Northern Luzon Bureau of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Under the guidance of Cecile Afable, the irrepressible doyen and mother of the Baguio media, the Courier remains the Cordillera paper. The weekly continues to receive several awards and its circulation has more than doubled since my beat under Steve.

With more time to quaff our beer glasses now, Domcie and I still frequent Luisa’s where we watch the younger ones check on what’s on their pigeonhole.