First day at the office, circa 1986

MANILA, Philippines - Minutes before the meeting, close to 3 p.m. that fateful day 25 years ago, in what would turn out as the very first editors’ meeting – a practice that would hold on for the next two decades and a half – the rain fell.

It was not one’s kind of July rain, although it was deep in the season. It came in torrents, first sweeping the Port Area into a filmy mist and gradually reaching a crescendo of pounding raindrops on the pavement.

One never forgets a memorable day. It was the birth of a great newspaper. Although the idea first percolated and germinated a few weeks back, when the feeling of exuberance was in the air following EDSA 1, it really came to being when the “pioneers” of The STAR met on that rain-drenched afternoon.

“The rain’s terrible,” said Mrs. Betty Go Belmonte, the newspaper’s founder who came resplendent in a red dress.

The meeting was held in a cramped little room in a corner of the ground floor of The STAR building, a small office probably once occupied by the take-charge guy of the dilapidated printing press that used to churn out the old Fookien Times.

The room was so small it would not accommodate the group made up of Mrs. Belmonte, publisher Max Soliven, president Tony Roces, managing editor Ricky Agcaoili, columnist Art Borjal, executive editor Bobby dela Cruz, business editor Conrad Banal, Life editor Millet Mananquil and the author, the sports editor.

After a long lively discussion on the thrusts and policies of The STAR, the meeting was concluded with Max given a parting shot. “We better make it a good one otherwise we’ll all be working for the paper company.”

Twenty-five years ago. How time flies. But an event as important as that first day in the life of a newspaper is forever ingrained in the mind, never to be forgotten, never to banish from consciousness.

“Remember that day?” Millet once asked.

From these humble beginnings, The STAR would emerge as the most respected, most influential broadsheet 25 years later.

How modest was its start? Tables were put together and pushed to the walls to get some breathing space in the editorial and reporters would come in a rush to corner one of the six creaky Remingtons on the tables. You could hear the interminable zip-blag-chug-zip-blag-chug sound of the Morisawa as it banged away headtypes.

Now you see state-of-the-art digital computer-to-plate system that cost close to P20 million and the Remingtons and Morisawa giving way to Macs and Polaris 100E plate setter. Through The STAR, we were able to come up with comprehensive coverages of six Olympic Games from Seoul to Beijing and one remembers how in 1986 in Korea we had to struggle to transmit our stories through telex.

But that was before the world hurled itself into the high-tech age of Microsoft and Windows and dotcoms. Thanks to The STAR, it has kept abreast with the changing times.

Twenty-five years and as the cliché goes, we’re still growing. We have really found our STAR. (Reprinted)