What journos are made of
With every piece also comes growth because I have to research, which requires me to read, read and read some more. I grow with every article I submit for this paper.
TV show host and columnist Butch Francisco.
Daily TribuneWith every piece also comes growth because I have to research, which requires me to read, read and read some more. I grow with every article I submit for this paper.
TV show host and columnist Butch Francisco.
Grit and growth are both essential in any profession, particularly in media. Grit simply enveloped my system as soon as I embraced the field of journalism late in my teens.
I became part of print media as the result of a school requirement. Journalism was my major in college and I had to spend an entire summer doing practicum work for a magazine that, sadly, is no longer in circulation. I consider myself lucky though because my mentors were quite exacting: They frowned on lackadaisical work.
Before I was even given my OJT certificate, I was already offered to join the publication as a regular staff member. No, I did not turn in the best pieces during my apprenticeship, but my bosses knew that I was not choosy with assignments.
I worked on stories other staffers did not want to do. I thought that was courage. But it was really ignorance on my part. I was so young I never realized the repercussions of doing controversial topics. One TV network president got so annoyed when I asked him about the drop in the ratings of the shows in his station that he threw me out of his office. I got even by slamming the door on my way out.
When I first joined television, I had more grit than talent. That was the time I was in ABS-CBN. The network treated me well, but I hated the format of the program assigned to me because it was all gossip. I left after five years and decided to study in Massachusetts. This was around the same time now Senator Francis Pangilinan and wife Sharon Cuneta were in Boston.
Pangilinan and I were in the same school, but he was a scholar and had a regular stipend. I was on my own. After school, therefore, I had to work at the commissary where I stacked canned goods.
I decided to leave my savings in the Philippines and tried out starting all over again. Looking back, that was true grit. With my small salary, I had to carefully budget my expenses. I sometimes ate moldy bread and even cleaned other people’s homes for a free meal.
Then, disaster struck. Everything I earned working for ABS-CBN got lost in a bank run. I had to quit school and fly back to Manila to rework my finances. Fortunately, GMA took me in and made me host Startalk for 16 years. I had to churn out grit at every assignment. I devised ways how to make my subject cry by my second question to save on precious airtime.
Remote coverages required even greater grit. I gatecrashed celebrity weddings, birthday parties and even funerals. I learned how to endure being in the middle of a rowdy crowd that mashed my butt and there was nothing I could do but tolerate what I only realize now was actually sexual harassment!
With grit automatically came growth. In those TV assignments, I studied how to be tough. I mastered how to play around with eight cameras, while receiving five different instructions from a pool of writers, the floor director and the executive producer. All those, I had to process in my head while speaking before millions of viewers — live.
And now that I write for DAILY TRIBUNE, I have to rely on grit to be able write my Saturday column. With every piece also comes growth because I have to research, which requires me to read, read and read some more. I grow with every article I submit for this paper.
It could be hard work, but I won’t have it any other way. Grit and growth had always been there for me through all those decades I’ve spent in media.