A paper flies

At the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1999, the world held its breath. For months, we were warned that the Y2K bug would fry computers, crash planes, shut off power grids, and plunge civilization into digital darkness as the world turned into the year 2000. Instead, what followed was a thunderous global sigh of relief. The apocalypse didn’t fly.

But not everything entered the new millennium quietly. By February — while the rest of the world was booting up without incident — the Philippines was walking into a political storm dressed in denim and swagger.

Joseph Estrada — movie star, gambler and the country’s 13th president — had declared an all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Tanks rolled into Mindanao, helicopters went on strafing runs and Camp Abubakar was taken — without breaking a sweat.

At the same time, Estrada scored a quieter but more chilling victory — one that didn’t involve guns, just paperwork and power. After another daily ran a story linking him to alleged government corruption, Estrada slapped it with a P101-million libel suit.

That was the cue. The taipan’s family, the owner of the paper for which this Contrarian worked, promptly sold it. One of the country’s oldest dailies folded in the face of executive displeasure — not because it lied, but because it had dared. The message to the rest of media was blunt: You can print what you want, but it will cost you.

And that was the backdrop in the first quarter of 2000 — February, to be exact — when DAILY TRIBUNE took its first unsteady steps. It had no pedigree, no apparent corporate umbrella and no illusions. It was born in a season of silencing, at a time when printing the truth could cost you everything.

Tomorrow, 30 June, the paper will celebrate its silver anniversary.

Beyond our borders, the world was equally chaotic. In May 2000, Vladimir Putin — cool, calculated and carrying the whiff of the KGB — became president of Russia. Twenty-five years later, Putin is still in control and still trying to bring Ukraine to its knees — at the cost of thousands of lives on both sides.

In July, the Concorde — the icon of supersonic arrogance — crashed outside Paris. And in October, the USS COLE was bombed in Yemen. We didn’t know it yet, but the pre-9/11 world was breathing its last.

Back home, a college dropout in Manila unleashed the “I LOVE YOU” virus from a dial-up connection. It hijacked inboxes worldwide and caused billions in damage. The West called it cyberterror. We called it “diskarte.” It was the kind of thing that could only happen here — a love letter with a body count.

Meanwhile, dot-coms were exploding with venture capital, with the NASDAQ peaking in March. By December, the party was over and the hangovers began. Pets.com, mascot of startup excess, joined the growing list of digital corpses.

And while the world gamed on The Sims, flipped open Nokia 3310s and voted people off islands in Survivor, a tiny paper no one expected to last was doing what others wouldn’t: calling it like it is.

Twenty-five years later, with Concept and Information Group, Inc. taking the helm in 2018, the DAILY TRIBUNE remains at its fightingest form — still printing in an age when print is said to be going the way of the dinosaur.

The paper is still poking the bear, “Without Fear, Without Favor” — not just out of duty — but because in a country where forgetting is national policy, someone has to keep receipts.

The world didn’t end at the stroke of midnight, but something else did: the illusion that truth was safe. And also, a paper was born.