The door I almost missed

THE INTERFACE

I was never a campus journalist, nor did I come from one of the UAAP or NCAA schools where student publications and journalism programs have produced generations of writers who eventually found their way into the country’s newsrooms.

In fact, I missed my chance to join our school publication altogether, so I never experienced spending my school days chasing stories, covering campus events or seeing my byline regularly printed on a student paper.

But the desire to write was already there, even if I did not yet know where it would take me.

I remember writing a piece for a school activity, a fable to be exact, that was supposed to end as nothing more than another classroom requirement.

One of my teachers read it, saw something in my writing that perhaps I had not yet seen myself, and decided to give it space in our school publication. I wasn’t part of the publication, but somehow my words made it onto its pages, and that small opportunity became one of the earliest signs that writing might eventually become more than something I simply enjoyed doing.

Looking back, it was probably my first lesson that not every opportunity arrives through the door you expected to enter.

That thirst followed me into college, where I was fortunate to learn from professors who were also journalism practitioners.

Among them were Mr. Vin Mancera and Mr. Johanness Chua, who introduced us to the realities of the profession beyond what textbooks and classroom discussions could offer, giving us an early glimpse of the world we would eventually have to navigate ourselves.

My first real encounter with that world came in 2023, when I entered the Manila Bulletin as an intern assigned to the Sports Department.

I came into the newsroom naive, carrying what I had learned in school and probably more confidence than actual experience, only to discover very quickly that knowing how journalism works in theory is completely different from producing a story that an editor is willing to publish.

That realization arrived through Mr. Ramon Bonilla, my editor at the time and eventually one of my mentors, who practically shredded one of my first articles into pieces.

For a young writer eager to prove himself, seeing a story return covered in corrections was humbling, but what stayed with me was not how many things I got wrong. It was how he took the time to explain them, showing me not only what needed to change but why it needed to change and how I could approach the story better the next time.

That badly beaten-up draft became one of the most important articles I ever wrote, precisely because it was nowhere near my best.
It taught me early that journalism has very little room for attachment to your own words. Sometimes an editor needs to tear a story apart, and sometimes the writer needs to put his ego aside long enough to understand why.

When my required internship hours ended, my time in journalism did not. I eventually joined the Manila Bulletin as a National News reporter, moving from the relatively protected environment of an internship into a newsroom where the stories were real, the deadlines mattered, and whatever appeared under my name would be read by people far beyond a classroom.

The assignments took me across different beats, from science and technology to health, education and other national issues, and once again I was fortunate to find people willing to guide me through unfamiliar territory.

Veteran journalists Ms. Merlina Hernando-Malipot and Ms. Ellalyn De Vera-Ruiz became mentors who helped point out the weak spots in my work, challenged me to improve them and taught me lessons that extended far beyond constructing a lead or meeting a deadline.

Eventually, I became a consistent presence on the publication’s board of top authors, something that naturally gave me a sense of accomplishment at the time. But the longer I stayed in journalism, the more I understood that numbers tell only a fraction of a journalist’s story.

Page views do not show how many times an editor saved you from a mistake. Rankings do not record the questions you learned to ask after once forgetting to ask them. Analytics cannot measure the value of having someone more experienced look at your work and tell you, sometimes gently and sometimes not, that you can do better.

Those were the things I carried with me when my career eventually took another turn.

I entered Truth360 with journalism as my foundation and stepped into the unfamiliar world of reputation and crisis management.

There, I met Jocel de Guzman, a legend in the public relations industry known for his work in crisis and reputation management, and began learning a different side of communication: strategy, planning, management and the complicated relationship between information, perception and public trust.

Journalism had trained me to ask what the story was. Reputation management taught me to look at what happens after that story reaches people.

That perspective became even clearer through Scam Watch Pilipinas, our advocacy that sought to move scam awareness beyond simply identifying the latest modus or telling people what links not to click.

We wanted to influence behavior.

That thinking gave us four simple but deliberate attitudes toward suspicious messages and transactions: “Magdamot. Magduda. Mang-snob. Magsumbong.”

Be “Magdamot” with personal information. Be “Magduda” when something does not feel right. “Mang-snob” when suspicious messages and calls demand attention. And “Magsumbong” when a scam attempt needs to be reported.

The words were simple, almost conversational, but that was precisely the point. Cybersecurity does not always have to begin with complicated terminology. Sometimes protection starts by turning awareness into habits people can remember and practice.

That experience taught me something I would eventually carry into technology journalism: information becomes more useful when people can understand what to do with it.

Then came TechWatch PH.

If Scam Watch Pilipinas taught me to look at the risks surrounding our digital lives, TechWatch PH opened another side of the same world: the possibilities technology creates and the responsibility that comes with understanding them.

Under TechWatch PH Editor-in-Tech Art Samaniego, I found myself entering another stage of that journey, this time helping build a platform devoted to making sense of a technology landscape that rarely stays still.

Today, I serve as Associate Editor of TechWatch PH, handling everyday operations and editorial decisions while drawing from everything the newsroom, reputation management and advocacy work have taught me.

I have come to see Scam Watch Pilipinas and TechWatch PH as two sides of our relationship with technology.

• Through Scam Watch Pilipinas, we protect.
• Through TechWatch PH, we nurture understanding.

One looks closely at the risks that technology can bring, while the other explores what technology can make possible. Different purposes, but both eventually lead to the same place: the people using it.

And that matters because technology never waits.

Artificial intelligence evolves. Governments move services online. Platforms change their rules. Cyber threats adapt. New devices arrive promising to make another part of life easier.

There will always be something new to report, but after moving through journalism, reputation management, advocacy and technology, I have become increasingly interested in a question that goes beyond what is new.

What happens when all of this reaches us?

That question is where this column begins.

I chose to call it “The Interface” because, in technology, an interface is the point where different systems meet and interact. For this column, I want that meaning to stretch beyond screens, buttons and software and into the places where technology collides with everyday life.

It is where technology meets people, where innovation meets responsibility, where policy meets the person expected to live with it, and where something designed behind a screen eventually produces consequences far beyond it.

There will be conversations here about artificial intelligence, digital government, social media, scams, gadgets and whatever technological development comes next.

But rather than stopping at what a technology does or how impressive it appears, I want to look at what happens after it enters the hands of ordinary people, because technology becomes far more interesting when we stop looking only at the machine and start looking at the person standing in front of it.

Perhaps that is also why the name feels fitting for my first column.

My own journey has happened at different interfaces: between school and the newsroom, journalism and reputation management, protection and innovation, reporting and editing, and now between being an editor and learning what it means to become a columnist.

Years ago, I missed the chance to join our school publication, but a teacher still found a small space for something I had written. That little space eventually led to a newsroom, the newsroom opened a door to another side of communication, and that road eventually brought me into technology.

Now, after all those turns, I find myself with another space to write.

This one is called The Interface.

I did not take the usual road to get here, but perhaps that is exactly why there will be plenty to talk about along the way.