College journalism is far much more than a showcase or training ground for students with a passion for a kind of writing.
It will require years before a student can look back to see the length and depth of the journey where words planted in a college paper served as seeds for the direction pursued in the near or distant future. La Sallian journalism shapes and reshapes itself with the changing temperament of the times — or how the Taft Avenue campus responds to the rest of the world around it. Nevertheless, the sanctuary that is the academe eventually yields to a far more volatile and even dangerous world that awaits the writer after graduation.
I have always shared by experience as a features writer for La Sallian during the earliest years when De la Salle College fulfilled its qualifications to be a University.
In 1974, Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang was produced by Raul Roco and written by Mario O Hara from a story by its director, was about to change the landscape of Filipino cinema. Director Lino Brock was doing the promotional tour focusing on colleges and universities to generate enthusiasm in what he believed as the reinvention of local movies in the eyes of the Filipino audience.
Brocka, together with the lead star of the film, the very young Christopher de Leon went to De la Salle University to promote the film. It was also then that the Communication Arts Department was recently launched by Dr. Clodoaldo del Mundo and still under the Languages and Literature Department of the College of Liberal Arts.
Brocka’s talk was insightful as it was exciting. I precisely remembered how he wanted to do more than reinvent but redefine the role of Filipino movies as a reflection of society and in shaping culture. Brocka was not merely promoting his latest movie but reaching out to the next generation of Filipino storytellers to bring new life and meaning to the cinematic arts.
The encounter with Brocka went much farther and deeper. I was one of the Features Editors of the school paper and we were assigned to interview the maverick film director.
My co-editor, Josie Sayoc (now McNeill) and I sat down with Brocka where he spent more than half an hour talking about his passion for filmmaking. He pointed out the role of the youth in helping reshape the mindset of the Filipino audiences to find the relevance in the films — both serious and downright commercial — as mirrors of society, vessels of information and sources for rumination and argumentation.
It was after that interview, after that precise moment, that I decided to become a screenwriter. I was a Literature Major taking up courses in ComArts — and this assignment for the school paper opened my eyes to the possible direction where I would course the rest of my life.
Looking back, it was my role as a campus writer that unwitting revealed what I was to become in the near and distant future.
This only proved that in any engagement with writing — whether personal, investigative or purely recreational — one discovers both the ins and outs of thoughts and options in one’s life.
Every time any writer pounds on his keyboard or pushes his pen on paper he is exploring what is within him and rediscovering who he is in the context of things around him. Writing gives form to all the ideas twirling in your mind, eventually defining form, substance and content from some thunderstorm of ideas dwelling in one’s cerebrum.
But more important than that, good writing goes beyond just the self of the wordsmith. Important and pertinent journalism serve a distinct purpose — and that is the commitment to society and responsibility to the audience. Good journalism does not only peg itself to truth but triggers questions, discussions and deliberations. Whether a student or a professional journalist, it does not matter. What is the binding factor is that a writer — any writer for that matter — must be dedicated to truth, never underestimating the intelligence and dignity of his audience but willing to be a purveyor of information and analysis whether good or bad.
In this age of alternative truth and overload of information, the greater the responsibilities of the writers — the young writers — to set the ground from which credibility and accountability can be established. This is the role of campus journalism where the training and the dignity in writing can be instilled and necessitated.
It all begins from an idea until this is given form through a string of words. But words alone are not enough. What is required in impassioned commitment not only to the art and craft of writing — but to use one’s chosen platform to affirm what is true and to change what is not.
This is the challenge to the La Sallian writer today.
11 October 2025
Alabang Hills
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This is an unedited submission from a former section editor of The LaSallian, reflecting on how college publications planted the seeds that helped him navigate through his career. The article also discusses the challenges The LaSallian writers face today in the age of alternative truth and overload of information.
Jose “Joey” Javier Reyes served as the Features, now Menagerie, Editor of The LaSallian in the 1970s.
He graduated from De La Salle University with a degree in Literature.
He went on to become a renowned film and television director, writer, and actor
as well as an essayist and professor.
He is currently a DLSU senior professional lecturer for the Communication Department and chair of the AB Digital Film program of the College of Saint Benilde.
