A business journalist, futurist and trade consultant
PAGBABAGO
Under the Bridge chronicles the journey of Miguel Z. Patolot who shares in the 567-page memoirs his experiences as a journalist, a futurist, trade specialist and family man. It is more than his story. In this book, the author takes us to several “behind the news” scenes of the business community newspaper, Business Day where he started as a junior reporter to become the executive editor.
Mike who finished a degree in foreign affairs did not plan to become a reporter. While awaiting an appointment in foreign affairs, this multi-talented professional joined The Economic Monitor, a weekly paper where Raul Locsin was publisher and editor. There he learned an open secret in the journalism world which was the marriage of business and journalism. Another was that newsmen were very poor people and that many of them moonlight as public relations agents to earn a living.
“Creating an independent and responsible business paper is the key,” Locsin noted after which he asked Mike to join him. The former added that he was committed to provide reporters the “highest pay vis-à-vis other papers and stock certificates or founders’ shares.” Mike weighed all possible positive and negative choices and the positives outweighed the negatives.
He realized that this decision meant his life would be one of “writing and re-writing” night and day to keep up with the editorial standards or what he describes as the publisher’s legacy. Mike spent 15 years with Business Day as reporter, executive editor and “forward planning manager.” He focused on economic and business developments in government planning, economic legislation, and international relations and spearheaded game-changers in business reporting such as organizing in matrix format the status of Congressional legislation that dealt with business and economics. He simplified the daily reporting on the status of House and Senate bills and brought economic legislation to the conference rooms for business planning.
He left Business Day to lead the formation of the International Association of State Trading Organizations of Developing Countries. As PTTC executive director, he chaired the ASEAN Working Group on Trade and International Association of State Trading Organizations of Developing Countries.
A colleague, Romeo Pajarillo, describes Mike’s brand of journalism with these words – credibility, fairness, easy reading and thoroughness. Mike hopes that memoirs and biographies such as this would help build and transfer knowledge on the science of reporting to journalism schools. Too, that the uncompromising editorial standards of Business Day would form part of the Philippine journalism culture and methodology.
After reading these memoirs, I am sure you will be asking the question – “What makes Mike Patolot tick?”
Since I share the same experience in the sense that I likewise survived a terrible car accident, I would attribute his drive to that Baguio accident where he escaped a near-death experience. In fact, he starts his memoirs with this incident: “If not for that particular accident I would also probably have ignored the providential gift of sight.”
As a futurist, he did some forecasting of journalism’s future. Among the 15, I am citing some of them. They are: “the shift of publications from general to special interests; the growth of more provincial newspapers serving their respective regions; the dominance of social media; the use of digital media as publication systems; the continuing trend for media ownership to be in the hands of larger publications becoming part and parcel of self-interest groups; continued government controls on print and broadcast media causing persistent adversarial positions on many issues; deterioration in knowledge, training and skills of journalists owing to poor academic background and grounding in sociology, economics, governance, anthropology, and their application to skillful writing and analysis; the growing dominance of women in broadcast and print journalism; and the growing issues on integrity of journalists, capability, skills and professionalism.
The book is a “must” reading not only for teachers of journalism and students but for publishers and decision makers in journalism schools as well. ([email protected])