MARIA RESSA

JOURNALIST AND SOCIAL MEDIA ADVOCATE

MARIA RESSA DOESN’T READ THE NEWSPAPER ANYMORE.

“I get all my news online,” she says with a smile. She has a point. The daily broadsheet no longer monopolizes our daily information due to the upto-the-minute updates on social media platforms like say, Twitter.

A broadcast journalist for nearly two and a half decades, known for breaking stories on terrorism for CNN and on ABS-CBN, Maria Ressa is now breaking different barriers. Once part of a systemized process of news gathering and reporting from a traditional standpoint, she now zeroes in on a movement that has essentially changed the way people think. “Today everyone can be a journalist.”

It is rather fascinating hearing those words come from a woman who made a name for herself in Asia and the world by sitting behind the news desk rounding up the news every day.

She started with only wanting to redefine journalism using new technology. The online news site, Rappler is making waves in the way current events are presented. A product that is 100 per cent Filipino, where else should this new paradigm be tested and fine-tuned but here? “Pinoys are the best at crowdsourcing information,” Maria Ressa says. “So what we come up with here can easily be replicated around the world.” She then divulges that yes, Rappler does have plans of going regional and soon, global.

“If you have a great idea as a Pinoy, wouldn’t you want to compete globally?” she asks. “It’s whether we choose to do it strategically, whether we take it seriously and whether we really want to be a contender.”

And contend we will. From the ripples that Maria Ressa envisioned with Rappler, it is now stirring a consciousness within the community where stories have perspective and encourage social change. She punctuates it best; “it is an exciting time to be a Filipino.”