intprin: People's Journal Newspaper

INTPRIN A52

Kady Michelle Wilson
Gabrielle Bianca Rodriguez
Sabrina Cruz

Name of Newspaper: People’s Journal

Corporate Name: Journal Group of Publications

Editorial/Business Address: 6th Floor Universal-Re Building, 106 Paseo de Roxas cor. Perea and Gallardo Sts., Legaspi Village, Makati City

Production Site/Plant: Rail Road St. cor. 19th and 20th St. Port Area, Manila. It is near Pier 15 and located behind the DPWH.

Phone: (+63 2) 813-5238 or 892-3052 to 58 local 126
Fax: (+63 2) 840-1369.
Website: http://www.journal.com.ph/

Publisher

1. Key Editors:
a. Editor in Chief: Augusto B. Villanueva
(no executive and managing editor)
b. News Editor: Lina Calso
c. Associate Editor: Manuel Ces
d. City Editor: Guillermo Abad
e. Section Editors: for Sports, National, Metro and Provincial

The Editor in Chief takes charge of publishing and the company’s editorial policy. He goes over all of the papers/articles and has the final say, in the case of Mr. Gus Villanueva, for all three tabloids namely Tonight, People’s Journal and Taliba. The Editor in Chief also has meetings to decide on the stories for the banners in the next day’s paper.

The News Editor runs the paper while the Editor in Chief just oversees it all. Acting as managing editor for this publication, he takes care of putting the paper together, picking the stories to print, and making sure that their 3 publications have 3 different banners to avoid competition.

The Associate Editor acts as another managing editor in a way, at least for this publication since People’s Journal hasn’t been able to find a new managing editor yet, and helps follow things up. He also closes the Opinion page.
The City Editor comes in early, preferably before noon for this publication, and directs/guides the reporters for their daily tasks or stories. They tell reporters how to start stories, making them go out of their way in investigation to look at other possible story angles.
The Section Editors basically are in charge of managing their respective sections.

2. Reporters:
There are more than 130 employees for all three publications under this Journal Group of Publications.
The reporters are all on the payroll receiving the benefits including meal allowance, transportation allowance, rice allowance and a full monthly salary.
The reporters have an assortment of different assignments. They report to work at 10:30 am and then meet with the City Editor to find out how the story that they will cover is to be slanted (in depth coverage, investigative reporting for example). They are required to submit 3-4 stories a day.

3. Correspondents:
Correspondents are paid per story that they submit, even if it isn’t published. Regardless of the length, each story is worth 200 pesos and correspondents submit on the average 3-4 stories a day as well.

4. Columnists:
Columnists are not on the payroll. They are not full-time because they do not write everyday since they have other jobs.
The People’s Journal has 5-6 regular columnists with some guest columnists/contributors. The guest columnists are those who come every now and then just popping up. They are paid around 500 – 1000 pesos per column depending on the name/reputation of the columnist.
There are also different kinds of columnists in the paper; there is environmental, religious, congress, Malacanang and even PNP columnists who contribute once a week.

History

According to Editor-In-Chief Gus Villanueva, the People’s Journal is “a high-end tabloid that caters to the A-class; it is similar to the Inquirer broadsheet”.
In the early 70s, Gus Villanueva thought that the industry was drab and wanted to start a 24-hour paper but it was not feasible at the time not having enough funds. He got together with other journalist friends creating a newspaper.
In 1972, Malacanang investigated them and made sure that they weren’t tied up with revolutionaries. After a month, they were allowed to print and on October 21, 1972, the Times Journal was born.
6 years later, coming from the same group of people, the People’s Journal was born as a broadsheet. Gus Villanueva was assigned to be Editor in Chief of the paper by his comrades and told to come up with an idea for this paper. Rupert Murdoch, who brought to the world the New York Post, changing it from a tabloid to a beautiful paper, influenced him. Gus told the people in Manila of the paper development in America and wanted to come out with something new, more in depth on crime, sports and entertainment. His help came from Vergel O. Santos, the assigned Managing Editor, and Antonio Friginal who both finished conceptualizing the paper with him.
People’s Journal was first launched on December 7, 1978 during the Martial Law period but the Print Media Council stopped them from printing because they has no permit. Although legitimately, they could print since they just used a barangay village paper and turned it into a daily.
The operators asked for a permit, acquired one and relaunched the paper on December 14, 1978. People’s Journal was now officially born and sold for 15cents a paper. After 3 months, the paper already had a circulation of 600,000 copies a day.
The Wall Street Journal US/Asia featured the People’s Journal staff in 1979. They were put on the cover as “The Largest 2cent Paper in South East Asia”.
A lot of sick people in need from around the country sought assistance from the paper seeing that it was strong in public service. The paper’s popularity was increased when they featured the comics of Carlo Caparas that became an immediate hit in the early 80s with people even getting mad at Gus when it was not featured.
In 1986, after the fall of Marcos’ regime, the Aquino government sequestered the paper thinking that it was pro-Marcos. This made the People’s Journal’s sales/circulation go down since it now featured all pro-government news. The reporters lost their appetite to write because anything that they said regarding the government would be rejected. The people who ran the paper now also became government appointed. Olager Joaquin was the editor in her time and Bbby de la Cruz was the editor when Ramos became president.
The People’s Journal fought for 19 long years in the Supreme Court to regain control of the paper for this reason. In 2004, Gus Villanueva and the rest of his staff finally won back their paper. Gus Villanueva also regained his position of editor in chief.

Circulation

Circulation is determined on street sales/daily sales based on the print orders that the publication receives.
As early as 6am, the agents come in and order copies. The amount of all orders is then compiled for printing. Returns of up to 20% are allowed so the publication subtracts the returns from the orders.
People’s Journal is sold from Luzon to Mindanao and has an estimated circulation of 110,000 to 140,000 daily regardless of being a weekday or a weekend. Storms and Typhoons can affect this circulation though according to their Editor in Chief.

Number of Editions

There is always one edition but sometimes they have to change or add an edition to add lottery results and special stories that came in after the deadline. On an average, there are two editions daily that can be told apart from the number of stars on the front page (one for the first edition and two for the second edition). A third edition is also possible though if there is time or if it is needed, which is rare.
The deadline for the editorial is 6pm the day before but it can be extended to 7 or even 8pm depending on the news that comes in.

Printing / Production info

It begins in the Editorial Stage. Publication starts with the News Gathering done by the reporters, correspondents and photographers who are assigned in different beats (locations). They then forward their news stories to the Desk to be evaluated, news processed and edited by the different editors and then discussed during the story conference. Advertising comes in afterwards, supplying the Desk with dummies/page models to determine placement. Once the pages have been determined, the Desk forwards the actual stories for layout (no ads yet).
The paper’s Page Layout is now also done by computer (electronic and not cut-and-paste) with people assigned to layout (but some editors still do layout). Pictures are considered the most important part of the layout. This is why People’s Journal does not carry stories on page one – the most if ever they did would be 2 according to their editor in chief. People’s Journal has 14 fulltime photographers on the payroll – regular employees, and some contractual workers as well signed for a couple of months.
These layout copies will then be proofread to make necessary corrections – typographical errors, grammar, spelling, captions, publication dates. Typesetting has been stopped since the 1980s when computers were introduced and came in 1986; their ‘typesetting’ nowadays is all computer/electronic. Proofreading though, is still done manually.
The Pre-Press Stage/section will now process the laid-out pages and place the ads on file for negatives. Each finished page is then sent in PDF form to the print office via email in approximately 1 minute each. People’ Journal has a page measurement of 7 cols. x 33 cms, which is equal to 231 cols. cm.
For the Production Stage, the stripping and plates, produced through computer to plate process, is what comes next. They basically turn the PDF file into a negative (Camera), strip it and use plates. In stripping, this is where the plotting of negatives are done per page signatures; this means that they are plotted according to their page number or how it will be folded to meet the sequence of printing corresponding to its fold. The platemaking production section then receives the plotted negative for plate conversion for print.
The Circulation department will now feed the production press of information as to how many prints to run based on the purchase order that they have received from dealers/agents.
Once they receive the print order, the Production Press can now proceed with the actual printing – taking into consideration allowances in spoilage and complimentary copies as well. Printing begins at 9:30am for Peoples Journal and the finished prints are usually bundled by 500. A Rotary Press is used and the publication owns two - Harris, purchased in the early 80s, and Horizon, which is slightly smaller. They have a print speed of up to 30,000 copies per hour. The publication does not lend out its equipment to others though since they are busy enough meeting their deadlines and printing copies for their three publications. Printing is also done separately from the editorial in the port office, which happens to be their old office before they moved to Makati last 2007 since their lease wasn’t renewed.
The Dispatching section finally receives the finished prints from the production press labeled for identification by order. Their responsibility now is to properly dispatch the prints whether by pick up or delivery. Since the publication is only printed in Manila, they send prints out to the other regions around the country through PAL, which is why they have to catch PAL’s deadline as well of 11am.

Advertising rates

Outside of the Philippine Star, Bulletin and Inquirer, the People’s Journal has the most advertising. This is, according to the Editor in Chief, because they are credible and the People’s Journal as mentioned is a high-end tabloid attracting good ads. Their biggest advertisers are the companies Smart and Globe.
The paper charges more than 130,000 pesos a day for a full color page – half of the broadsheet. Page 3 is the most expensive page though since it is almost like the front page being the first page people open up to. Considering this, the back page is also expensive since it is what a lot of people see.
The biggest chunk of the paper’s revenue/funds comes from advertising followed by sales. There are display ads and classified ads too that are considered as advertising. Classified ads are typically just text charged by word or by line. Display ads typically involve color and artwork charged by the amount of column centimeters taken up.

(Per Col. Cm. in Ph Peso)
a. Display ads - weekdays = 296.80; Sunday = 319.20
b. Classified Display – weekdays = 235.00; Sunday = 250.00

(Per Line in Ph Peso)
c. Classified Lines – weekdays = 87.00; Sunday = 102.00
d. Front Page Foot Ads - (2) Decks Only; Standard Size: (2x4) (3x4) (7x4)

Position Surcharge:
Front Page: Plus 100% of the base rate
Back Page: Plus 100% of the base rate
Centerspread: Plus 30% of the base rate
Page 3: Plus 30% of the base rate
Color (Red): Plus 30% of the total of the base rate and the position surcharge
4 Colors: Plus 80% of the total of the base rate and the position surcharge

Sources

Mr. Augusto “Gus” Villanueva answered all of the questions that we had regarding all aspects of his publication from editorial to advertising to circulation and production.
Mr. Michael Mosqueda from the HR Department was also helpful in providing answers to any of our unanswered questions.

Output