SANIB-SINAG  5  July-December 1998
 5.5    
Synergism in Media:
A Challenge for Sun*Star
(Part 3 of 3)
By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
 
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SANIB-SINAG’s last previous issue carried in the "Saniblakas Updates & Tidbits" section a note that the two members of the members of the Management Team were hired as opinion-editorial (Op-Ed) section editors and writers of the Sun*Star network’s Manila operations. The operations cover the existing SunStar News Service (which gives non-local news and other editorial materials to 20 or so Sun*Star community newspapers all over the country and to a number of news outlets abroad), the planned broadsheet daily paper of the network in Manila, to be called Sun*Star Manila, and it’s daily tabloid newspaper, BonggaStar.

        As conceptualized, the broadsheet, would have a synergism orientation to enable the entire network contribute significantly to a broad-based national consensus-building. In a way, this development has given a boost to the Saniblakas Foundation’s official thrust for the current year, which is promotions work for synergism. Launching date of the new paper was repeatedly postpones from April, to May to August and finally to "an indefinite date in the future."

        By the middle of July, two points became obvious to us. One, the main owner of the Sun*Star network, the family of former Transportation and Communications Secretary Jesus Garcia, did not have enough liquid resources in hand to get the project of the ground. Two, the member-newspapers of Sun*Star Publications Network were not at all ready for a synergic endeavor, especially since the latter’s flagship paper has been the Cebu daily and the network’s broadsheet daily would be centered in Manila.

        For Sun*Star Manila to finally see print, the Garcias would have to get enough funds, for anyone’s noblest of visions cannot be realized in an industry that demands really big funds from really deep pockets.

        But beyond simply seeing print, for that paper to be established and sustained in an already overcrowded newspapers market, it has to avoid becoming "still another Manila newspaper," it has define its niche and fulfill the latter’s requirements to the hilt. According to Chairman Garcia, the project’s advantage over the others is the existence of the Sun*Star networks, namely SSPN and SNS. The principle of synergism would underpin efforts to maximize on such an advantage, and this is where the Saniblakas leaders found common ground with Garcia and the editor-designate, Jose L. Pavia, who has been a staunch believer in the principle. However, in the interim period of waiting and "flexing muscles" for the coverage of the election period and succeeding weeks, it became clear that much work needs to be done "at the level of the grassroots," namely the individual SSPN member-newspapers’ mindsets and capabilities.

        The Saniblakas team has since moved over to another newspaper project mainly for income purposes and were recently informed that Sun*Star Manila would possibly be launched very early in 1999. If this would indeed happen, the capitalization problem would clearly have been addressed. But the bigger challenge is in realizing the synergic ideal behind the envisioned network character of the paper. And in that, we can only wish them all the best.

  
 
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