1) Marcoses and Dutertes openly declaring war with each other.

Because both are power hungry demons.

It’s common knowledge that Marcos financed Duterte, who ushered back the Marcoses to power. The agreement was Duterte will give way. However, Duterte (the whole family) is a greedy crook with no morals whatsoever, so didn’t want to relinquish whatever power he had and went head to head with the Marcoses via Inday the daughter. Now they’re slugging it out in public, exposing each other’s shit.

Meanwhile, we in the Pink Movement are eating our popcorns while watching them destroy the country. We are going down in flames while China breathes down our neck.

2). CNN Philippines has closed down.

As I said during my talk at the journ dept of my college (for the curriculum review), the revenue model of traditional media is no longer working. It has been that way for quite some time now, really. I told the department that the curriculum should go beyond producing graduates geared toward traditional media. Data is king = the department should think of ways how graduates can be more attuned to the changing times, so that they can feed the hungry beast. Journalism is not free and you have to find ways how to pay your journalists.

Ironically, ANC will also follow the way of the dodo. They will also be shut down soon, my friends told me last Friday when we were at the central bank. The country’s only business channel will be gone. Once upon a time, they were the first thing I listen/watch in the morning when I have my breakfast and while preparing to leave for the day’s coverage.

So sad.

So it’s just GMA and TV5.

So far it’s only the subscription model that works these days. That’s how my company makes money ever since. That’s how news wires survive…but it seems like Rupert Murdoch is fucking it up = collapsing Dow Jones and merging it with Wall Street Journal. DJ has closed down its local bureaus in Southeast Asia and concentrated everything in Singapore.

Even “content creators” and social media influencers (not sure if these terms can be interchanged) discovered that advertising from FB and Google will not sustain them. They need advertising/product collaborations with brands to sustain their fulltime content creation jobs = marketing. Some have launched Patreon accounts, which is basically follows a subscription model. Or the content creators themselves sell their own creations, in the case of artists, it’s their paintings, prints, stickers, what-have-you.

News is content, it is a commodity that you need to sell. There must be some way to monetize news. In our case, it’s proprietary info and data catering to a very niche market.

For the kind of news that keep the spirit of democracy, freedom, and justice alive, grants are the way to go. Being backed by corporations (in the case of TV5, it’s First Pacific through PLDT) and political entities (GMA = Marcoses) is equal to getting into bed with the Nazis. You have too many compromises.

I told the journ dept, I started this career with several broadsheets out on display on newsstands. Nowadays, you would be hard-pressed to find hard copies of formerly revered broadsheets.

Times are a-changing. We’re struggling to keep up.

3) Mommy cat Ampon has five babies She’s doing well but exhausted. I keep feeding her and treating her to chicken meat and bones. The kitties are alive and seem to be healthy and suckling.

I just ordered an insulated cat house from Lazada this afternoon. I will also get a large box from the supermarket later after work today to contain the very mobile kitties.