Business Mirror

Business Mirror

Alex Romualdez

Cara Suplido

Awin Galang

A51

The Newspaper that was assigned to us is “The Business Mirror” which is the National Newspaper of the year in the year 2006. It was founded by an experienced publishing family, the Cabangon Chuas, on October 3, 2005. Their office is located at the 2nd Floor of Dominga Building (Annex), 2113 Chino Roces Avenue corner De La Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines. Their contact numbers are: (Editorial)
817-9467; 813-0725; 817-8407; 812-1691. Fax line: 813-7025. (Advertising Sales) 817-5351; 817-1351, 817-2807 and +639228909088 and for the Circulation department 893-1662; 814-0134 to 36. They can also be reached via E-mail at news@businessmirror.com.ph and through their website, http://www.businessmirror.com.ph.

We had the chance to interview the Circulation Manager, Mr. Ronald Allan S. Callao, about the newspaper. First, we asked about the differences of the different positions in their company. He describes the Editor in Chief as the one on top of the triangle or in short the head of all the editors while the Managing Editor is second in command. However, they don’t have an associate editor. Instead, they have Section Editors who edit only certain sections of the newspaper. There is no exact number of Editors present at any given time for the publication, but he says that there are a lot of reporters coming from different areas. He also mentioned that they get opinions from certain columnists.

The newspaper, Business Mirror, measures 20 columns x 110 centimeter center spread and 10 columns x 55 centimeters half spread. It usually has 28 pgs for regular issues (Mondays-Thursdays) and can reach up to 54 pages during Fridays and weekends. This is because they add more sections such as lifestyle and health. Overall, they produce 85,000 copies a day.

The Business Mirror distributes their newspapers using several ways such as land travel, airplane delivery and in house delivery. In order for them to be successful in distributing their newspaper in time, they follow certain deadlines for every section of their news paper.

Section Topic/Section Deadline

E Life 3:15pm
D Sports 7:15pm
C Perspective 4:15pm
B Companies 7:30pm
A3 Inside Cover 8:00pm
A1 Cover 8:15pm

Initial Good Copies – 9:45pm
1^st trip to North/South Luzon (Port Area-Luzon) – 10:00pm
2^nd trip Airport (Visayas and Mindanao) – 11:30pm
3^rd trip Makati City Route – 1:00am
4^th trip Quezon City Route – 1:30am

Of course, they sometimes encounter problems such as heavy rains, which lead to flood and cancelation of flights to the airport. In case of that, they have back up plans such as through cargo in bus stations (namely Dagupan Liner and Victory Liner Inc). After that, their people pick up the deliveries from the bus stations and distribute them to their respective destinations.

We also had the chance to talk about the sales of the newspaper and the cost of making the newspaper. As our professor said, the cost of newspaper production is greater than the price it is sold. The business mirror costs 25 pesos and its production cost can reach up to around 80pesos per copy. They make up for the cost through advertising but Mr. Ronald says that the company also compensates for some of the cost for “Their primary concern is their readers”. Even in the hike of crisis in oil, transportation and etc, they still continue to retain their price and even give discounts to their frequent readers who avail of weekly, monthly or annual subscriptions to their newspaper. He says that if they raise the price of the newspaper, there will be less readers because, in today’s times, “Every centavo counts.”

In terms of competition, their main competitor is Business World. But they say that their target audience is different. The Business world uses more technical terms while they use simpler terms for the younger people to understand more.

Learning all of those things about the Business Mirror made us curious about its production expectations for the years to come, given that we have discussed the possible demise of newspapers in class a few times. When the interview was coming to a close, we were able to discuss our opinions on the future of newspapers. He told us that it’s not true for them that newspaper demand becomes lower and lower each year. For the Business Mirror, their demand rises every year but the problem they encounter is the supply of paper because China buys all the scrap paper here in the Philippines. This means that the newspapers here can’t get fresh or recycled supplies of paper. He also says that the newspaper won’t die even in today’s computer age for the newspaper will only be presented in a different medium. Perhaps there is still hope for newspapers – we’ll only know for sure when the time comes.

video clip: http://vashmg.multiply.com/video/item/45/INTPRIN_-_Business_Mirror