March 29 2000

About Hot Manila

Hot Manila is a tabloid.

Long before it came to mean a scuzzy, irresponsible and sex-obsessed rag, a tabloid was a newspaper which condensed and compressed news.

Hot Manila compresses news. And dissatisfaction. It concentrates anger, condenses plain speaking, flavors it with irreverent humor and presents it with the sort of good writing that's been pansified and adulterated by the growing influx of suck-up lifestyle text producers (I quail at calling them "journalists" or "writers").

This is journalism without hangups or pretense. I once heard a newspaper editor describe herself as a "gatekeeper". It's certainly a much more lofty term than "news shill". Many editors and publishers tend to carry on like this and when they go too far the proprietors or their children have to yank really hard on their purse strings to jerk them back to reality.

That's why the Internet is so neat. Now the qualification for becoming a publisher in the Philippines is no longer having to be a tycoon, or a tycoon's daughter. Hot Manila is a tabloid produced by a group of friends who want to show the sort of journalism they can practice when they don't have to report to tired, uptight, irresolute, unskilled, shallow or pretentious editors. Let those dour guardians keep their gates. We can climb in through the Windows.

One more reason why Hot Manila is a tabloid. It features politics. Current tabloids focus on sex, entertainment, and crime. They harp on the the bizarre and repulsive. If those aren't the exact elements of Philippine politics then I'm your gatekeeper.

Alan C. Robles