CEBU CITY – The province of Siquijor is hosting the 2025 Regional Schools Press Conference in Central Visayas starting Monday, Feb. 24.
Siquijor is hosting the competition for the first time and welcomed campus journalists from private and public schools in Central Visayas.
“There had been plans to hold the RSPC in Siquijor but it didn’t materialize because of some challenges like transportation. Finally this year, the RSPC is finally happening in the province and everything is set,” said Dr. Eduardo Omaña, program supervisor in English and regional focal person in journalism of the Department of Education-Central Visayas (DepEd-7).
Omaña said that the RSPC is anchored on Republic Act 7079 also known as the Campus Journalism Act of 1991.
“The Act aims to give our students the opportunity to discover what is there in journalism and how they will be able to be guided on the path of journalism,” said Omaña.
Elementary and secondary campus journalists are competing in the RSPC.
While not all participants are expected to take journalism-related courses when they reach college, the Campus Journalism Act will play a key role in shaping their careers, Omaña said.
“This is part of the career pathway. Although not all students are expected to enroll in journalism-related courses, this is somehow preparing them for college life in which they will be asked to write something on anything. At least they are already capacitated on that particular aspect,” said Omaña.
With the advent of social media, it is also imperative to expose students to how journalism works, Omaña added.
Campus journalism will also help young learners how to counter misinformation or disinformation, Omaña said.
"This is also one way of counter attacking misinformation, disinformation especially nowadays that there are a lot of reports that have to be validated in order to really see the reality and truthfulness of certain issues,” the Education official said.
Competition proper will be held at the Siquijor State College where 6,000 individuals composed of students, coaches, and division technical groups will gather.
“We are confident that this would be very successful,” Omaña said.
Participants will demonstrate an understanding of journalism through skillful execution in various platforms such as print, broadcast, and online.
The RSPC will have individual, group, and school paper categories.
The individual contest (English and Filipino for elementary and secondary) includes news writing, feature writing, editorial writing, sports writing, copyreading and headline writing, science and technology writing, photojournalism, editorial cartooning, and column writing.
For group contest, activities include radio script writing and broadcasting (English and Filipino for elementary and secondary), collaborative desktop publishing (English and Filipino for elementary and secondary), online publishing (English and Filipino for elementary and secondary), and TV script writing and broadcasting (English and Filipino for elementary and secondary).