We are 25 and, surely, must have achieved a lot as a newspaper even under the past management and by the present one; thus, we are set up for bigger accomplishments. 

Twenty-five in terms of individual human age is a most exciting, most promising age even as some sociological authorities classify being 25 as being still a youth of legal age that allows entry into a myriad endeavors, though excluding some public offices that have constitutional age requirement, such as 35 for senators. Politics has its own esotericism!

Journalism -- whether print, broadcast, or digital (the so-called “new media”) -- is more egalitarian than political governance. DAILY TRIBUNE is involved in print and digital social media journalism. We should rejoice about being just 25 years old as a media organization. We can achieve more, on top of what we have durably and admirably become in those 25 years.

Personally, joining DAILY TRIBUNE as a columnist in the lifestyle and entertainment section has expanded our coverage. We are allowed to blend lifestyle events with those of entertainment. And that’s very good because entertainment idols themselves are now recruited and persuaded to participate in lifestyle events that don’t have much to do with their movies, TV shows, albums, stage productions. 

By 2000, showbiz idols have become unquestionable influencers of lifestyle trends, including those that have to do with fashion, cosmetics and health. Some of them even become endorsers of educational institutions, culture and arts establishments, health hubs and centers. 

For better or for worse, they are persuaded to join political parties and become political leaders. Influential wealthy families do not prohibit their sons and daughters anymore to marry showbiz idols. After all, so many entertainment idols have become millionaires and billionaires who send their children to study abroad, graduate there, and come home to become entertainment gods and goddesses themselves. They don’t even begin in small roles but in major ones or as co-leads of established stars.

In the first decade of the 2000s, Regal Films producer Lily Y. Monteverde (more popularly known as Mother Lily) sponsored many lunches and dinners with actors running for senators and the respective husbands of Vilma Santos and Sharon Cuneta, namely, Ralph Recto and Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan. The huddles with them gave showbiz journos the chance to listen to a young finance wizard (Recto) and a young lawyer (Pangilinan).

But Mother Lily had her own favored candidates who were not from showbiz, and one of them is the military man Sonny Trillanes who first ran for the Senate in 2007. The man himself couldn’t make it to the dinner event set up at the Monteverde-owned Imperial Palace hotel in Timog Avenue, Quezon City. because he was in jail.  Trillanes sent his wife and his brother to field questions from the showbiz scribes about his platform and opinion on certain issues. The wife and the brother answered almost all of the questions addressed them. He won: more than 11 million people voted him into office on a strong anti-corruption advocacy.

Had Mother Lily decided to hold that campaign bit for Trillanes in jail, we would have joined in, too. One of our early non-showbiz assignments from a magazine was to interview a wealthy businessman jailed at the National Penitentiary in Muntinglupa for rape.

We also a joined a group of showbiz journos invited to interview the incendiary activist Roger “Bomba” Arienda as his life story was partly filmed also at Muntinlupa, starring Ace Vergel, and directed by Mel Chionglo.

There really is so much for us to look back and look forward to.  I have an inspiring professional relationship with the Lifestyle desk: they give me assignments to cover, and I work on them seriously and thoroughly. They allow me to go to invites for coverage from lifestyle and entertainment managers who look up to DAILY TRIBUNE for its fair reporting. My stories are treated well, so I am inspired to work on maximum overdrive for the decades to come and which my energies can maneuver.