Nick Joaquin on journalism

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Posted by Jaemark Tordecilla on May 3, 2011 at 17:04 | Comments (4)

At the day job these past few weeks, my colleagues and I have taken to discussing, over lunch, a recent intellectual transgression committed by a certain member of the literati, after said transgression was reported on this blog. My lunchmates, who happen to be some of the best journalists in the country, were particularly resentful about the implication made by the transgressor (and his cohorts in the literary scene) that reportage was, somehow, inferior to literary writing.

Then a few days ago, I came across this speech delivered by Nick Joaquin, the beer-toting giant of Philippine letters, talking about journalism vis-à-vis literature. Apart from writing fiction in novels and short stories, Joaquin cut his teeth as a reporter, under his nom de plume Quijano de Manila, and his thoughts about journalism are very insightful, and right:

My journalistic writing developed in me an understanding of writing in general. You know, actors say there are no small parts, there are only small performers. So I say there are no hack-writing jobs, there are only hack writers. If you look down on your material, if you despise it, then you'll do a hack job. But journalism trained me never, never to feel superior to whatever I was reporting, and always, always to respect an assignment, whether it was a basketball game, or a political campaign, or a fashion show, or a murder case, or a movie-star interview. As J. D. Salinger admonished (but this ain't a verbatim quote) I was always shining for the fat housewife in the third row. I remember this young poet scandalized by this article I did on Nora Aunor. Wrote this young poet: “Nick Joaquin is writing about Nora Aunor! Nick Joaquin has become a bakya writer!” But that article lives as one of the best essays on Miss Aunor because she was not bakya to me and I did not go bakya on her.

Since this is, at last check, still a sports blog, this gives me the excuse to once again link to this report written by Quijano de Manila on match-fixing in boxing from 1962. Enjoy.

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#1 Paolo on 2011-05-05 11:44 (Reply)

I'm not surprised at all that this post has yet to garner even a single comment. I assume that the avid followers of this blog were turned off by the extensive article of Nick Joaquin. Filipino sports fans (or Filipinos for that matter) simply don't like to read long-form stories.

Joaquin's "Journalism vs. Literature?" was a required reading for us during college and so was the Nora Aunor story. This is the first time I've read his reportage on match-fixing in boxing and it's definitely a must-read (as with any other Joaquin work) for anyone who likes sports.

I doubt if any of the fans of this blog read it in whole, as shown by the zero comments. Today's sports fans prefer one-click spoon-fed information. I can't completely blame them though because of the nature of new media and their penchant for truncated output. Still, people are missing a lot on extensive sports articles. Sadly, hoping Filipinos to read long-form stories is still a long shot. Pardon the lame pun.

#1.1 Nomad on 2011-05-05 22:55 (Reply)

don't make a sweeping statement. i have read it the moment I came across with the link. and so what if I did not make comment, right away?

#1.2 no namer on 2011-05-06 15:03 (Reply)

it's none of your business whether we, the fans of this blog site, comment or not

#1.3 taleweaver on 2011-05-06 15:32 (Reply)

seriously dude...just because no one commented doesn't mean people don't like long form articles. Try reading most of Bill Simmon's columns on ESPN...or the recently ended Freedarko blog.