117 Years into the future

and expertise no longer seem to be as important as the shared opinion of the masses, especially in social media.

Even when facts are so often ignored, denied, defied, improvised, or invented depending on who is speaking and whose interest is being served.

In J. K. Rowling’s series of novels, every installment created as much of a buzz as the latest iPhone model among a generation accused of having lost all interest in reading. According to Albus Dumbeldore, a principal character in Harry Potter, the truth “is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”

And—might we add?—with great respect.

Which is why in upholding the truth, The Manila Bulletin has found ways to deliver it to the modern audience, that is still struggling to find new sources of information, as well as new ways to process it and to extract from it some form of personal and collective good.

The Manila Bulletin has long become a multi-platform news organization. This, in a way, is the most crucial step in our series of adaptations, the shift from the traditional one-to-many model to a more democratic, more interactive communication system, in which we, as well as our readers, are both observers and participants.

It has been our policy to be more innovative with our delivery of the news that, good or bad, changes our reader’s world, our world. We were, for instance, the first newspaper in the Philippines to go 3D, just as we boldly experiment with every new technology that allows us to edge closer to the future of reading, from pop-up pages to music embedded in the pages so you have a soundtrack as you turn them.

Today, the pages of The Manila Bulletin have become like magic or, in the words of the tech-savvy, “very clickable,” with tap-and-go services like QR (Quick Response) codes or NFC (Near Field Communication) chips to take you from the page to the screen of your smartphone or your tablet, and from there to anywhere,