EDITORIAL

PAPI TODAY

By Johnny Nunez

After years of merely coasting along, the Publishers Association of the Philippines, Inc. (PAPI) stands strong today.
Presently, PAPI counts on some 1,000 regular – member publishers and about 1,750 associate members. Its member publications account for a cumulative total of about 2,000,000 copies every week, more than the combined circulation of Metro Manila dailies on a day-on-week run.
The figure does not include yet the news and information aired by its affiliates in radio, television, and cable organizations, giving PAPI the widest information outreach in the country.
Provincial and regional publications, which are identified with PAPI are often taken for granted particularly when they confine themselves to parochial issues.
Taken together, however, these segmented publications offer a veritable media infrastructure that can effectively educate the people on crucial issues, help them form enlightened public opinions on such issues, and galvanize them to united action towards addressing defined problems.
At 32, PAPI has had it all. It has experienced fame and glory as well as dejection. Tenacious as it should be, however, it survived trying times, managed to recoup lost grounds and even flourished. PAPI’s history is certainly colorful.
Originally composed of newspaper publishers, PAPI was organized in 1974 and took over from the martial law-anointed Philippine Council for Print Media (PCPM) which was generally considered as a benign tool and instrument of press censorship of the Marcos dictatorship.
To its credit PAPI, originally headed by then Bulletin publisher, Brig. Gen. Hans Menzi, a Marcos trusted ally, remained relatively free and independent in its initiatives and programs. It even participated in world conferences, with its publisher-members free to meet and interact with their foreign peers.
At a time when the military banned assemblies even by just three persons, PAPI was allowed to conduct seminars, fora, workshops and symposia that attracted popular participation from publishers, editors, and other media practitioners even as "classified" topics discussed among them never saw print in their papers.
When the Marcos dictatorship was thrown out in 1985, PAPI’s role was cast in limbo. What press freedom indeed was there to protect when media organs of all imaginable shades and persuasions sprouted like mushrooms and press license even became fashionable?
Left in a quandary, PAPI’s leadership which used to be monopolized by media stalwarts from the major Manila-based national publications shifted to the hands of community newspapers publishers. Muriel Sto. Domingo of Naga City became its first president from the local media.
The year immediately following 1985 were turbulent for PAPI. Its officers could not provide it with steady leadership since they were also too preoccupied with their own survival. In addition the organization was hard put to shake off the unpalatable stigma of having cooperated with the Marcos dictatorship. It was aptly described then as "more dead than alive."
In 1995, when then PAPI president Diony Fallarme, no new election was called because no one among its officers was willing to preside over the burial of a dying organization. They instead scouted for a capable leader who can reverse PAPI’s nosedive and were unanimous in their choice of former National Press Club (NPC) Secretary General Juan P. Dayang.
Dayang who traces his roots to the community press, however, never relished the idea of serving as its mortician. Eventually, however, he yielded to appeals for him to give PAPI one last insulin shot. The rest is history.
To nurse PAPI back to health and regain its lost respectability and influence, Dayang moved to consolidate the organization’s ranks and patiently wooed back to its fold its skeptical and prodigal members, He next expanded PAPI’s membership to include not only publishers but also editors, reporters and broadcasters.
Dayang simultaneously launched institution-building initiatives to make the organization more attractive to its members, deserve public support and enshrine PAPI in the annals of history of Philippines and world media.
Among such initiatives were the convening of the National Press Congress every December as a highlight of the annual National Press Week observance, and the Midyear Executive Session of Publishers and Editors in June. Both fora have evolved into potent discussion venues for raging national issues which helped made PAPI become a major partner of the people and the government in nation building.
To address urgent issues concerning the community press and the areas where they operate, PAPI recently piloted in Kidapawan City a region and province-based media summit scheme. The Cotabato Media summit proved impressively successful it will soon be replicated in Aklan on October 26 – 29, 2006.
The media summit scheme which includes three major learning and sharing components will be expounded on in a separate article. Suffice it to say, it promises to be a new blockbuster initiative that is certain to enrich PAPI’s arsenal of programs designed to further strengthen its press freedom and development advocacy.
Initiated by PAPI, Aklan welcomes the participants who came from all over the Philippines to the on-going Aklan Media Summit. /MP mailto:madyaas_pen@yahoo.com