We are 16

 

SIMPLY SAVORING the sweetness that proverbially comes with this age, we dispense with all those self-aggrandizing celebrations of how Punto!, deemed doomed from birth – its very name perennially punned to the Tagalog term for sepulcher – not only proved its naysayers dead wrong, but left print media contemporaries deader than dead, as in utterly unremembered.

We choose to be grateful, giving due recognition to all those who grew the publication to what it is today and, assuredly, what it shall be in the morrow as well.

We are 16. Less happenstance than providential that our years correspond to the exact number of us comprising Punto! – from the general manager-publisher, the editor, five columnists, five correspondents, a lay-out artist, and an administrative-marketing-advertising-circulation staff of three, the newsboy included – the solid foundation as well as the stabilizing cornerstone of Punto! Central Luzon. With the grace of the Almighty. To Whom we offer all the glory.   

More, much more than 16 are our advertisers, corporate and in government, in and out of the region, that have steadfastly shared as much their good news as their resources with us through thick and thin, through all these years, even in the economic-crunch times wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our sincerest gratitude for their confidence – more so, their trust – in Punto!

That very trust swelling among our thousands of readers and followers – never mind our share of hecklers and bashers cravenly cloaked in anonymity – grounded upon objectivity, fairness, and accuracy in our news, fearlessness in our opinions, strict adherence to facts, in the service of the malayang Pilipino as emblazoned in our masthead. Trust that we shall ever endeavor to keep unshaken and grow even stronger in the coming years.

Continually guided as we are by what Joseph Pulitzer long ago articulated, which at Punto! has come to be the very article of faith of a truly free and unfettered press:

…[F]ight for progress and reform,

never tolerate injustice or corruption,

always fight demagogues of all parties,

never belong to any party,

always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers,

never lack sympathy with the poor,

always remain devoted to the public welfare,

never be satisfied with merely printing news,

always be drastically independent,

never be afraid to attack wrong,

whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Pointed, yes. As only Punto! can.

We are 16. Not simply a cause for celebration but a tangible testament to how well we have lived up to our role in society.