At 11 a.m. on January 29, 2024, CNN Philippines announced that they would cease operations, effective January 31. The company had been unable to recover from financial losses.
This is my second goodbye to the news organization. Late last year I decided to step down as the contributing editor for CNN Life Philippines where I worked for three years. It wasn’t my first job at CNN, actually. Two years prior I was a senior writer for a few documentaries and a short-lived morning show called “Newsroom Junior.” My job was to curate news stories that kid reporters would read on TV. I pitched to one of the producers about making it kind of comedic, with a self-aware “Weekend Update” delivery, but they thought it best to keep it straightforward.
Writing for TV at CNN taught me how to make the most out of as few words as possible. Armie Jarin-Bennett, the company’s former president and accomplished journalist, used to read my early drafts with careful attention. She taught me how to use video as narrative tool — not everything needs to be said out loud. Use the simplest terms, but also use the most impactful sounding ones. And that one page of script is equal to 60 seconds on video.
I found my way to CNN Life when former editor Don Jaucian asked me if I wanted to join the team. I took on the two roles simultaneously until 2020, when the company did a series of layoffs. When I got a text from my executive producer about doing a call, I replied and told them that I was nervous. They just said, “everything will be okay” with a smiley face. Ten minutes later, they were in a call with me to announce the bad news.
Thankfully my position in Life was safe I so stayed on throughout the pandemic. Most of our stories between 2020-2022 talked about the challenges of confinement. The team worked on some great things that resonated with a lot of us who were also Going Through It that time. Writer Toni Potenciano did great reportage on lockdown hobbies that took over our lives. We started a best of K-pop songs list in 2020. When my grandma passed away in 2021, I wrote about re-connecting with her through crochet, a hobby we used to share.
We were a small team — former editors Anna Canlas and Don, with photographer JL Javier and associate editor Gaby Gloria working on the news cycle everyday. We didn’t put out a lot of stories, but we were always careful about its substance. My editors chopped through stories line by line, making sure each sentence was truly needed. Don made the editorial decision not to italicize Filipino words in our stories because we didn’t want our national language to be perceived as foreign in our own country.
One of my favorite assignments was going behind the scenes at the Vice Presidential debate in 2022. I zoomed around UST with photographer Joseph Pascual trying to catch as many moments as we could, chatting with potential veeps and their aides to get the story behind the story. We got invited to preview Jo Koy’s film “Easter Sunday” and I wrote about the problems around the representation of Filipinos in his comedy. I interviewed Ian Veneracion for an action film he was promoting, where he clearly fell in love with me in the last five minutes of our chat.
With JL Javier, Joseph Pascual, and Don Jaucian at the VP Debates in 2022 at UST.
I was always proud of the work I put out because I had editors whose integrity and work ethic I could always trust. At CNN Life, the stories weren’t always personal or serious but they had to be meaningful. These were the guiding principles we lived by, even as news all over the world diminished in credibility. I think the turning point for me was the last national elections. Having seen candidates campaign up close while trying to maintain a sober and balanced point of view wasn’t easy to take, especially given the result. I wish I had done more, and I feel like I failed in believing that I was doing my part by reporting the news. It was a heartbreak that took a while to get over.
I started thinking what it still meant to stay, but I stuck around for a bit. Environmental factors and changes in my own career and personal life began to make things clearer for me. It was time to leave, so I did. It wasn’t to move to another media organization, but to say goodbye to it altogether. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
But while I’m no longer a journalist, I’m still a writer. The past few months have been an attempt at defining what that means to me now. I turned to video as a new medium (she’s a vlogger) and am genuinely enjoying what kind of storytelling I do with it. I’ve rediscovered the excitement that writing long form used to give me. And while I still write in the traditional sense for client work, looking at it as a necessity makes me feel less like I’m fighting in the trenches whenever I open a blank Google Doc. A week after I left Life, I couldn’t type up more than 300 words without needing to lie down.
Still, I miss the newsroom. I grew up in them — from the student publications offices in both high school and college, to the dilapidated building of The Philippine Star in Port Area, Manila. Writing is a solitary experience but the editorial teams I’ve been part of always made the work feel communal. We had pathetic editorial budgets but we learned how to make magic out of nothing. We made decisions that we had to learn how to own up to, because our bylines were right on top of each story.
I don’t know if writers are just really good at making ordinary things feel so overly important, but I guess for a day like today, we get a free pass. Every day, members of the media face impunity and unfair treatment in the workplace. Titles are folding, and more journalists like me are turning away from jobs we’ve had for years. I gave five years of my life to help build something that will forever be gone, just a memory of stories and photos and videos that will be archived on the shelf of a dark room or a 2-terabyte hard drive that eventually gets mislabeled. Where this brings us remains a mystery. I am fearful, but I’m also young and stubborn. I still believe that things will still get better. They have to.
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It’s hard to end this one something light, so I’d like to spend the last few lines to thank everyone who’s been part of the CNN Life community. To our readers who support our work, thank you for your time and kind words. To our contributing writers, photographers, designers, and artists, it’s been an amazing to witness your work change and grow with each story.
To the CNN Life team and all my colleagues before, it has been an honor working alongside you all for the last decade. Thank you for having me. I love you all.