In media today, small is big
Lifestyle journalism for small town Philippines
I thought my journalism career had hit a dead end. Over the last 25 years, I enjoyed the best of two worlds: I shuttled between metro Manila, the highly urbanized capital of the Philippines, and San Pablo City, my still idyllic hometown with a deep heritage in coconut plantation living. In the mega city, I had a full career as a lifestyle journalist, a glossy-magazines editor, and a freelance corporate writer. In the countryside, I am an innkeeper, clay artisan, and heritage advocate. But seismic shifts in my family circumstance (my husband was diagnosed with cancer), plus the media crackdown by the Duterte government and, eventually, the return to power of the Dictator Marcos’ family, were forcing me to explore taking permanent refuge in our small town and leaving behind my career in media.
While I could imagine a quiet life writing from our B&B, surrounded by century-old trees, I couldn’t imagine how I would pay the bills. Who would pay me to write about life in my small corner of the world? And what legacy could I carve out in my remaining years if I were so far away from the big leagues in media?
All my questions were answered in rapid succession and with breathtaking precision over a 100-day period during the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program (EJCP). Here are some pivotal answers I took from that experience:
What’s going to happen to my career if I move to a small town?
I learned that seismic shifts are happening in media all over the world. My despair over our government’s shutdown of ABS-CBN, the biggest media company in the Philippines (for which I had worked for most of my professional life), was somehow eased by the realization that disruptions in legacy media are creating opportunities for smaller, hyper local media platforms to rise up and thrive. So there’s never been a better time for a journalist like me, living in a small outlier city like my hometown, to have our own media outlet with content primarily for our community. This is an opportunity I had not seen until I applied for EJCP.
Who will pay me to write about my small part of the world?
Surprise! I can pay myself for writing about my hometown—eventually, anyway. The EJCP is a powerful micro-enterprise course that puts together toolkits of business strategies and insights to empower journalists to be independent publishers. I learned that it is possible to build sustainable media projects with a surprisingly large impact on smaller communities. The viability of the platform is not based on a wide audience reach; instead, it relies on a deep understanding and engagement of an audience. If I play things right, I will be able to raise enough money so I can pay myself and my team. In fact, I found the tools like the value proposition, the audience funnel, Lean Canvas, and landscape analysis so handy and powerful for entrepreneurial ventures, I’ve even applied them to running my little B&B business.
What lasting legacy can I leave behind from my small corner of the world?
Jeff Jarvis, a pioneer in teaching entrepreneurial journalism and one of the first speakers in our course, struck a very deep chord in me when he said: “Consider journalism as a service to a community.” This statement set the direction for me not only for the course but also, I hope, for the years I am now ready to spend back in my hometown. It revived in me a passion to pursue good even as I try to make money in business. The perspective gave me a whole new approach to the craft of journalism as a tool for change. The key is to provide information that we know our audience truly needs, rather than just churning out content for clicks and shares.
Next was Anita Li’s series of sessions on The Green Line, a solutions-driven media outlet for the under represented communities in Toronto, the mission to serve the people of my hometown leaped to life through her examples. Anita was already living the dream I had just discovered is possible for myself. This was so inspiring. My legacy can be a movement for finding solutions for our city’s challenges.
Who will I serve?
At the start, I had a narrow focus: to provide information to San Pableño world citizens who have returned to live in the hometown after having spent many years in bigger urban centers. I wanted to help people like me who need to learn to navigate the city that has become unfamiliar over the years. But as I listened closely to our community, through interviews and quick surveys, I found out that even people who never left the town feel disconnected and lost because of rapid urbanization, mostly unplanned, over the last three decades.
So I expanded my audience and value proposition. I will help forward-thinking San Pableños rekindle a sense of belonging and purpose by telling stories about the way we live, as well as by channeling our aspirations for an orderly and liveable city we can all be proud of.
Critical to serving our community is the drive to keep listening to their needs and constantly getting to know them better.
I’m calling my project Gotta be San Pabluy. San Pabluy is a nickname for us. It means we belong to San Pablo and we belong to each other. We aim to be the first San Pablo lifestyle platform focused on creating a sense of belonging. This will be on Instagram and Facebook because that’s where my audience is. Eventually, we will be on Substack.
Can I really make it on my own?
Yes and no. While I learned that it is possible to be a self-employed journalist, I also learned that I won’t be alone. The most valuable aspect of the program is the opportunity to interact with a truly global cohort, instructors, speakers, and alumni. Watching and listening to them gave me windows to different worlds. Yet I was also struck time and again by how much we were alike. For instance, I was not the only one dealing with illness in my family. Several of them were, in fact, turning to journalism to find and share solutions to long-term care. I was not the only one grasping for ways to find expression as a journalist living under a shrinking space for press freedom.
The determination and passion of my new friends from Sudan, Mongolia, Colombia, and China were so inspiring to me. And I was not the only one trying to make sense of life in a community. Perhaps the most valuable gift of the program is the opportunity to stay connected to a large network of fellow indie journalists from all over the world. After 100 days, I came away with a new conviction that in the new media landscape, starting small is starting big.
