[Blog Entry] Reading the Newspaper

Reading the Newspaper

As a kid, or even as a teen, I didn't really read the newspaper, not even for the funnies. The only time I picked the broadsheet up was when it was required for school. It's not that I didn't like to read, or that I found news boring. Rather, it's the fact that it's printed on newsprint, and I didn't want to get my hands dirty (yes, I'm a clean freak!).

Two decades down the line, I feel like I'm making up for all those years. Part of my job means doing research, and for the past three months, I've been reading every single issue of The Philippine Star after the EDSA Revolution. And if you can do that for half a day, I applaud you.

I'm currently in the year 1991, at a post-Mount Pinatubo explosion, and a post-Vizconde Massacre headliners. Over the years, it's interesting (and sad) to see the same patterns recurring over and over again (even until the present day). There are a couple of weird news items though, from women claiming to give birth to a fish, a boy possessing a tail, to a four year old boy giving birth to a stillborn child. College sports fanatics should know that DLSU for some strange reason, has been caught violating UAAP rules in basketball over the years. Kris Aquino is an interesting subject as she has a fetish for basketball players (Joey Marquez was a basketball player before an actor, for example). But it's also comforting to read various Filipino inventors on the front page, discovering breakthroughs in psychology, or alternative sources for fuel.

Well, simply reading old newspapers with foreknowledge can be fun. But yes, boring, especially when you keep on doing it for several hours straight.