The Sports beat

MANILA, Philippines - Reporting on sports is no laughing matter. You have to have an eye for detail and a quick mind for play-by-play analysis. The people who will read you haven’t seen what you’ve seen and will need the facts, straight up. Those that were with you will want to know you got it right, simple as that.

That’s the job of Lito Tacujan, sports editor of The Philippine STAR for the past 25 years. His experience in covering the games that matter to us all spans even further than this, however: a good 40-year career in sports journalism that has seen his industry grow, change, and evolve with technology.

Tacujan, a two-time president of the Philippine Sportswriters Association and winner of the Carlsberg and San Miguel Corporation sports writing contests, came to The STAR during one of the most pivotal years of our country’s history. As an assistant sports editor at a different newspaper in 1986, he received a call from the late columnist and one of The STAR’s founders, Art Borjal, in July of that year. In his words, it was “the biggest break” of his career. Soon, he found himself at the doorstep of The STAR offices.

“The very first editorial meeting of The STAR in 1986...I remember it vividly,” says Tacujan. “It was raining hard when Conrad Banal, who was to edit the business section, Millet Mananquil, still the Lifestyle editor, and myself were ushered into a small room with a swing-panel door.” That small space, cramped and looking like a foreman’s office at an old printing press, served as the “war room” of The STAR for the next few months. It had been only five months since the uprising at EDSA occurred and democracy’s floodgate had opened, releasing a mob of competing newspapers out on the streets. He remembers the late publisher Max Soliven saying, “We may be coming in as the 23rd newspaper, but it has its own reason for being.” Another significant personality in the room, the late founder Betty Go-Belmonte, stressed upon having values of fair play and objectivity for their fledgeling newspaper. Tacujan remembers, “It was my fondest memory of the STAR that has endured through the years.”

It was touch and go during the first few years but Tacujan stuck by his post. “We were confident we would emerge as a major newspaper under the leadership Belmonte and Soliven,” he avers. Today, The STAR and its sports section are counted as one of the top dailies and number one section in the industry.

“The sports section of the star has improved tremendously from a single black-and-white page in l986 to a two-section format with an average take of four-color pages daily that draws a wide-base readership,” Tacujan proudly reports. “We take pride in maintaining our position as the best sports section with its daily dosage of local and foreign sports stories, features, and sports columns led by the Sporting Chance column of Joaquin Henson.”

Tacujan’s guidance of the Sports section has led it through many successes in the changing media landscape. A partnership with Philstar.com has brought the section to an even wider audience, boosting its reputation as one of the best in the business. He asserts, “We showed the way in putting up comprehensive accounts and incisive analyses of the fights and exploits of Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, which transcends significance as a sporting event with its global impact and national concern.” Many of the subjects tackled by the sports section have been good enough to command the front page banner-story treatment which also often leads to the formation of special stand-alone, back-up color supplements that command huge advertising revenues. Suffice to say, the sports section has more than proven itself as an integral part of The STAR’s integrity and commercial value.

“I have been a sportswriter all my life,” says Tacujan. “I never regretted being a sportswriter and never realized that, toward the late stage of a career that spans over 40 years, I would be manning the helm of the best sports section among the national dailies.” For 25 years, he has been the name in sports at the Philippine STAR and will continue to be so for many more to come. “We may have come in late in the game but we became the leader of the industry with a solid foundation.”