Reading the first paragraph did not come as a surprise. Perhaps, I knew deep down that this day would come, but not that I wanted it to happen this soon. Looking at the sentence, “But your Baguio Midland Courier is not spared from the worldwide trend that newspapers are facing unprecedented challenges, leading to closure of venerable publications,” definitely hit home that day.

   In retrospect, the manifestations of this day looming were actually crystal clear and shoved right in front of us for quite a while now. Ever cared to notice how Midland’s weekly release continues to lose more and more pages over time? The answer doesn’t really matter because noticing and not noticing such a thing is both an indication and an exact mirror of print media’s dire situation in our country as the digital age escalates rapidly.

A Tradition and Practice in Peril

   While it is not something to be completely miserable about, it is more of a loss we should fear, as it is both a tradition and a practice of journalism in peril. As early as August 8, 1811, Del Superior Gobierno, the Philippines’ oldest newspaper, has paved the way for the proliferation of print publications, engraving our country’s history with documentations of ordinary stories and of the truth.

    It is without question that the advent of technology is an innovation we opt to embrace along with the fact that we need its integration in journalism for broader audience engagement, enhanced creative work, and convenience. But then again, print media is a practice we could not simply let go of, for it has long established its pivotal role in our society, especially in reaching, informing, and representing the marginalized sectors of our community.

    News websites today are mainly accessed through mobile data or the internet, and we know for a fact that despite modernization, there remains a portion of our population where digital citizenship is still a foreign concept.

    In fact, in a speech during the Asian Development Bank (ADB), The Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) indicated that in 2023, 65 percent of Filipinos remain unconnected to the internet[2]. Indeed, access to the internet is access to opportunities, but in places of digital poverty, what are the chances of having such an opportunity?

On Newspapers and Declining Readership

    In writing, there exists an inverted pyramid that lives rent-free in the minds of every news writer you will ever meet. Along with it is a principle called KISS, which means to “keep it short and simple.” To craft an effective headline, the shortest one is always our holy grail.

    Why is there a need to do so? Simply because readers will not waste the critically precious ten seconds of their life to read a lengthy and unnecessarily complicated title that won’t supply in an instant what they want to know.

    In fact, headlines are somehow forced people pleasers and attention-grabbers, but more than that, the need to do such a technique is because we are faced with the fact that the Philippines alone is notorious for having a declining readership attributed to low reading interest[3] and low reading comprehension[4]. The future of print publications remains in great peril as conveyed in these numbers.

    Aside from our staggering low score of 340 in terms of reading comprehension bagging the lowest rank out of all countries[5] surveyed by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Media Ownership Monitor Philippines also revealed that in 2019, “Only two or three out of 100 people in urban areas were reading newspapers”[6], while five or million Filipinos in the urban area and 60,000 out of a million in the rural area remain interested in reading newspapers.”

    Additionally, the study highlighted that there is an ongoing and steady decline in print as a news source among Filipinos. With records of 22 percent readership in 2020, 16 percent in both 2021 and 2022, and 14 percent in 2023, the future of print publications remains in great peril as conveyed in these numbers.

A Challenge to Student Publications

    In the same way as Baguio Midland, campus publications around the Philippines share the same burden in keeping this fading practice alive. As part of a 61-year-old student publication in the same highlands Midland has served, we are more than challenged to strive and continue our mandate inside the university.

    The Mountain Collegian (MC), the official student publication of Benguet State University (BSU), is known for its printed publication since 1963. Its establishment started from a two-page newsletter and eventually bloomed into countless literary folios, tabloids, coffee tables, magazines, and even broadsheets that documented almost half of BSU’s 107 years of rich history.

    Campus publications are privileged to have a stable and permanent audience but the manifestations of this recurring low readership illness permeate even within campus corridors. Doubtlessly, other student publications share the same situation, which explains our need to transition from pen to pixels with the rise of creative video productions, podcasts, website articles, and the like.

Archiving the Archives

    We should not merely look at the Baguio Midland Courier’s closing as an ending, but rather, a call to action for members of the press to delve into and study alternative methods of amplifying the truth and disseminating information where tradition and innovation could safely coexist in a single sentence.

    In an attempt to do so, preserving the printed legacy Baguio Midland has left us is a necessity, a tiny yet meaningful step to perpetually grip on to the printing tradition of journalism with the essential aid of technology. Archiving through simple compilation and digitization of previous printed issues can really go a long way; it could even spark further studies on print media as a news source for Filipinos.

    If the truth is in constant danger of being tinted red or of complete vanishing, so are the means of amplifying and keeping records of it. We opt not to simply waste accounts of history when we have all the means and privilege to conserve it.

Eulogy to a Sunday Habit

 The symbol # or 30 is a copyreading symbol that marks the end of an article or simply, an end of a story.

   Today, we mourn for the Baguio Midland Courier’s print publication as they release their final printed issue for circulation.

    For the locals of Baguio, the nostalgia of sipping their kapeng barako on a cold Sunday morning, as they turn the sheets of their freshly brought and printed tabloid after running their market errands or attending church, won’t be the same anymore. For campus watchdogs, we sit in horror on the seventh day of this week as we bid goodbye to the printed narratives and legacy of one of Cordillera’s cornerstone of responsible community journalism, free press, and democracy.

    With it, we also swallow the most bitter pill, that indeed, the times have changed, yet, the Philippines’ chronic illness of low readership and low reading comprehension has long devoured not only the hopes of the press, but our nation as a whole, and it will continue to eat us alive.

    But then again, as long as there is truth to be told and we remain willing to be its voice, the deadly and dying game of journalism continues.