QUESTION: What made you become a crusader?

“Oh, I’m not aware that I’m a crusader,” laughed Eugenia Duran Apostol, grand dame of Philippine journalism, with typical modesty.

“I was just doing what should have been done,” said Apostol, Eggie to friends.
She said, “Journalists have to tell the truth. So I just reacted to some things that were happening like martial law and Ninoy (the assassination of former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983, which helped to bring down the Marcos dictatorship in 1986). Nagalit ang mga tao; nagalit din ako. (The people got angry; I was angry too.)”

Apostol was then the publisher of Mr. and Ms., a magazine which during the early 1980s shifted from a harmless, nonpolitical format to a more critical stance towards the government. Articles and columns took issue with the Marcos administration, and the magazine was harassed by the military for its pains.

With the Aquino assassination, Mr. And Ms. put out a black-and-white Special Edition, the better to cope with fast-breaking developments.

The Mr. And Ms. editions, along with We Forum, Malaya, Veritas and a few other publications, became known as the alternative press” (the “mosquito press,” according to Marcos), and they were instrumental in shaping public opinion against the dictatorship.

After Mr. And Ms., Apostol scored greater successes. Our multi-awarded role model is 77 but looks younger, thanks to a healthy and active lifestyle and a cheerful, positive outlook towards life. A Bicolana, she was born in Sorsogon in 1925, second of eight children of Dr. Fernando Duran of Sorsogon, Sorsogon and Vicenta Obsum of Bulan, Sorsogon.

During World War II, the Duran girl almost died when shrapnel from an exploding bazooka bullet lodged in her stomach. She was rushed to a hospital as her sisters prayed to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

“Heaven must have heard their prayers,” wrote Lorna Kalaw-Tirol in the book Seven in the Eye of History (Anvil Publishing). She was saved by plasma from a guerilla camp in Casiguran. Her brothers walked 40 kilometers to secure the plasma.

Apostol attended the Holy Ghost College (now College of the Holy Spirit), then run by German nuns, in Manila, and took up philosophy and letters at the University of Santo Tomas where she graduated magna cum laude. In 1948, she married engineer José Z. Apostol.

Her journalistic career began in the Catholic-run Commonweal and Sentinel (where the crusading Apostol spirit first surfaced, to the displeasure of the conservative Rufino Cardinal Santos). Later she joined The Manila Times, then the leading daily; edited the Woman and Home supplement of Manila Chronicle and, during the early years of martial law, the magazine Woman’s Home Companion.

In 1985, she founded Philippine Daily Inquirer as the political scene was heating up again. Marcos called for a snap election. Ninoy’s widow, Corazon Aquino, challenged him for the Presidency.

The Inquirer later dislodged the crony newspaper Manila Bulletin from the Number One spot among broadsheets, and remains top dog today.

In 1994, feeling the Inquirer “was strong enough to live without me,” she resigned as chair of the board and retired from the newspaper. (Businesswoman Marixi R. Prieto succeeded her.)

But she wasn’t through with journalism yet. She wanted to reach out to the big tabloid readers in the Philippines, the kind who lap up sex-and-crime stories. So she came up with a serious tabloid, Pinoy Times.

Soon the small newspaper began to challenge then President Joseph Estrada the same way it challenged Marcos, exposing his shenanigans and mistresses, and winning many readers along the way. Unfortunately, advertising support was nil. Pinoy Times, to everyone’s regret, folded up.

“ I lost too much money,” lamented Apostol. “I was spending so much on the editorial staff when, in a tabloid, you should spend only a little.” She learned that lesson from the experience, adding she still would like to get to that audience (tabloid readers).

These days, in between her singing and dancing lessons, what keeps her occupied is the Education Revolution, the main advocacy of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power, of which she is chair. The president is Maria Lim Ayuyao with Butch Hernandez as executive director.

The project has three core programs: Adopt-a-School; Mentoring the Mentors; and School Empowerment.

The Education Revolution seeks to improve the standards of public schools, enhance teachers’ skills, and encourage school-based development through discussions and practical training sessions, among others. Educators are encouraged to reach out to communities.

So Apostol has not hang up her retirement shingle yet. “I have decided that after EDSA I and II politics is not yet complete. It did not go deeper into our problems.” The Education Revolution is a reaction to this.

In October 2001, Apostol received the first Knight International Press Fellowship Lifetime Achievement Award in Washington, DC.

In her acceptance speech, Apostol, who was against US President Bush’s warlike policies, indirectly referred to the Sept. 11 tragedy, and she ended with a prophetic prayer:

“ Lord, let not the deaths of these innocents be the reason for the deaths of more innocents in the future.”