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[av_heading heading=’Sir Jake Macasaet showed how to master the trade ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY JUN VELASCO
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January 12, 2018
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WITH the passing of another icon in Philippine journalism, Sir Jake Macasaet, publisher-editor of Malaya and past longest-serving president of the Philippine Press Institute, we in the profession ask, “another guru is gone, what now?”
Sir Jake’s passing brings to mind the Big Guns of the trade, if you will, especially those who have gone to the Great Beyond, the likes of Ka Doroy Valencia, Mac Vicencio, Ben Rodriguez, Letty Magsanoc, Gani Yambot, the brothers Sol and Rod Villa, Bubby Dacer, Pat Gonzales, our hometown hero Ermin Garcia Sr., fellow Pangasineses Joe Fermil and Bayardo Estrada, and others.
We remember many unforgettable vignettes about them which we want to share.
There’s something about these men and women which we can’t say about those in the other professions. It is their deep sense of brotherhood or belonging to their craft.
Whether in the democracies or totalitarian regimes, we learned that this sense of brotherhood and affinity in journalism is well known.
This bond of brotherhood works like an article of faith.
Journalists are molded by the fire and discipline of experience. Those in the trade will tell us there’s no short cut to mastering the craft. One must start as a cub and rise though the gut of hard work, fears and tears, and lots of disappointment. Such was how the Malaya boss-man would sink into the skull of his reporters and students.
We used to hear this kind of teaching from our first editor in community journalism, Ermin Garcia Sr., when we were a cub reporter of his Sunday Punch, the paper whose tradition of fight is being continued by his junior.
The discipline, Jake would hammer into the heads of the young, is that “to grow and rise in the field is to beat the rough zig and zag of the circuitous road in order to reach the top.”
There is always that hammering like a testing of one’s steely will, the rigorous discipline which cannot be acquired by gift or edict. There is no exception to his hard and painstaking rule. The few who want to stage the high jump will eventually find later that they will lose their privilege to be counted.
Even those in PR know and appreciate this fact of life among the journalists they deal with. We know a lot of them who cannot hide their natural respect for the real practitioner.
Partly or due to association, these PR people will not only learn the art of rigorous discipline which Jake unrelentingly talked about. These PR men and women, due to the heights of heroism shown by journalists, get contaminated by the virus eventually.
This fraternal closeness brings to mind the beatings or hazing in fraternity organizations, which as we all know would lay the basis for brotherly bonding.
It is said that the bruises, the flogging and the beating – like how they do in fraternities – are designed to lead one to the perfection of the art of journalism.
Jake’s well-known acerbic comments against mediocrity and clumsiness are remembered for his sheer dedication to the craft.
At press time, Johnny Dayang, chairman emeritus of the Publishers Association of the Philippines, called up to extend his group’s “heartfelt condolences and prayers to Mr. Macasaet’s family. Jake was like my own brother.”
May Jake, guru and inspiration, rest in peace./PN
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