(We are reprinting here the article There’s The Rub: Alternatives of Bicolano columnist Conrado de Quiros which was first posted online 11:53pm (Mla time) May 10, 2005, Inquirer News Service, and published on page A14 of the May 11, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer)

        IT’S not the easiest thing in the world to run a media outfit in the province, least of all a publication. Making a profit off it, tidy or not, is almost out of the question. Many publications are produced largely for political reasons. If they make money at all, they do so not from sales or from ads but from private patronage.

        Which is why you are absolutely grateful when you see the exception, the one that maintains a fierce degree of independence, and a reasonable level of quality, however straitened its circumstances. Such a one is the Bicol Mail, published in Naga City by my friend Nilo Aureus. The Bicol Mail was an institution in Naga, and in Bicol generally, before martial law. It was one of the earliest publications there, and helped mightily earn for Bicol its reputation as having one of the freest presses in the country.

        The Bicol Mail was shut down by the martial law government for representing, along with national newspapers like the (old) Manila Times and Chronicle, another thorn on its side. Nilo resurrected it only a couple of years ago, knowing it would be an uphill climb. The reason for it was that he did not want it to be beholden to anyone, least of all the politicians. And so from the start, he adhered to a policy of not accepting donations and notices from them. He accepted only legitimate ads, where they were forthcoming, while maintaining a competent staff at reasonable rates. The publication is weekly.

        People have been wondering how long he will last. I asked him so myself. I said it must be costing him a pretty penny, using good-quality paper and full color in his front- and back-page photographs. He conceded it was a drain on his pocket. What kept him afloat, he said, were two things. One was a printing press, which the Aureuses owned, and which gave him a fairly long leash. The other was pride: He would not let a family legacy go to waste, or disappear in obscurity. It’s a legacy he means to pass on to his own children. “I get rich,” he says with the wry smile of a visionary, or one for whom money is just a means to an end, “I’ll make it even better.”

        Everyone says it’s done the community a world of good over the last couple of years. But everyone despairs of it as well as another one of those blessings that tend to be fleeting. Good things, people shake their heads with tired wisdom, have a way of having a short shelf life.

        That is the part that astounds me. It’s like the elections, when we hang our heads sorrowfully and say some candidates will win or lose whether we like it or not. Why so when we hold the power for them to win or lose in our hands with the vote? (Of course, that is a power the Commission on Elections keeps robbing us of, but that is another story.) The fate of publications, no less than the fate of candidates, does not lie outside of us, it lies within us. We do not patronize publications, they die, in the same way that we do not vote for candidates, they lose. We buy publications, they live, in the same way that we vote for candidates, they win.

        My own instinct is to wonder why, if a publication like Bicol Mail is a universally acknowledged grace (except of course by the charlatans it attacks), the various institutions of society — the Catholic Church, the schools, the NGOs, the civic organizations — and the public itself do not give all the frenzied support they can muster. It gets more circulation, it gets more ads. It gets more ads, it gets more life.

        The situation of Bicol Mail raises entire questions about public responsibility, or duty, or initiative. It is a problem, of course, that applies to a wide range of things in this country. The same is true of local movies. For a long time, Filipinos have been complaining about the horrendous decline of the quality of local movies, as exemplified in particular by the so-called “pito-pito” movies, or movies done in seven days and seven nights with all the flaws of Creation and none of its wonders. Yet the same people do not naturally troop to the movie houses to watch the movies of the more serious directors, allowing them to die like seeds thrown on barren ground, or waste away like pearls cast before swine. You don’t support the good movies, you’ll allow the bad ones to fester.

        The same is true of elections. During the last one, Filipinos were complaining about the choice between an incumbent who had shown only a predilection for money and power and had raised the ante on unscrupulousness and unethical behavior and another movie star who was in cahoots with the people of the discredited, and overthrown, former president. Yet there were other choices, not least of them Raul Roco, who had just turned the Department of Education from one of the most corrupt offices during Joseph Estrada’s time to one of the most efficient afterward. People just wagged their heads and said he had no chance. Well, you spurn the right choice, you make the wrong one triumph.

        The same is true of the current political situation. We do not lack for initiatives like Nandy Pacheco’s Kapatiran, which openly excoriates “trapo politics” [traditional politics], as typified by the pork barrel, and seeks to restore decency in public office. Yet we wag our heads with tired wisdom and look at people who do these things, undeterred by criticism and the havoc their crusades do to their personal fortunes, as at best being quixotic and at worst being batty.

        The alternatives have always been there. We just think it’s other people’s business to make them work, not ours. In fact, in this country the real question has never been, “What’s the alternative?” which is the one question we keep hearing these days. The real question has always been:

        “Why the hell don’t we support it?”