The night Dolphy died

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

Sol Aragones breaking Dolphy’s death on ABS-CBN News Patrol. (Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

I will remember where I was when I learned we lost Dolphy.

The big story that day was the extreme traffic wrought by keeping the Metro Manila buses along one lane of EDSA. Our van was at a concrete island on the turn to Quezon Avenue from EDSA.

After we aired a live report for TV Patrol, the news desk told us to stay put while deciding if we would do another for the 11 p.m. newscast.

It was nearly 9 and raining. A crew mate and I were already settling down from dinner, shut in our crew cab.

The desk editor on duty called. “Who’s on standby at Makati Med?”

I gave the name. “Okay. You get ready too,” he said, and hanged up. I called our guy at Makati Medical Center.

“Nag-tweet na si Ruffa,” he said. “Nag-aabangan na dito.”

We read Ruffa Gutierrez’s post via a workmate’s Blackberry: “R.I.P Ninong Dolphy.”

The Net was already abuzz, but no one was yet confirming it.

Commentators on DZMM radio were still bantering about the traffic, cryptically telling listeners who texted queries, “Please wait. We still don’t know.”

At the ABS-CBN newsroom: Monitoring TV channels covering Dolphy. (Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

By then, we were told to pack up, pick up some hardware at the base, and proceed to Makati Med. Another crew watching traffic elsewhere in EDSA was diverted there too.

The TV news break greeted us when we got to ABS-CBN. Dolphy’s partner, Zsa Zsa Padilla, confirmed that Dolphy had indeed passed away.

And just like that, our headlines quickly shifted gears from commuting to the loss of a showbiz great.

Weathering Pedring

(Shots by Anjo Bagaoisan)

CALUMPIT, BULACAN–The shouts of wares and prices rang from the rows of makeshift stalls that encroached on the road plying the town market.

A tindera invited passers-by to try her tilapia, while another wrapped bananas in rice paper and watched over the turon deep-frying in a pan. The prices were largely the same, but few stopped to buy.

Paces away, hundreds of people crisscrossed the kilometer-long pool of water covering this basin-like side of the MacArthur Highway.

(Shot by Chito Concepcion)

Traveling north to Apalit, Pampanga or south to Malolos, most trudged knee-deep in the water, recurrent images alluding to the crossing of the Red Sea.

People who preferred themselves dry paid at least 20 pesos for a seat in canoes docked there like jeepneys, barkers calling the shots. Also for rent: an air bed. Motorcyclists could hire a boat or a pedicab to ferry their bikes for close to 500 pesos.

Those who wouldn’t afford the ride could also hitch one on the empty dirt trucks employed to carry many over still-impassable throughways in Central Luzon.

(Shots by Anjo Bagaoisan)

After 5 days, the flood had not subsided from either the road or the real kiosks of the vendors in the pamilihang-bayan. More so in the 22 barangays submerged in this town.

A few more feet, and we would have seen Thailand’s floating market.

The vendors have begun to literally pick up the wet pieces and return to business as usual.

Pagpapatrol: Pinaabot

Malayo ang byahe, pero maikli ang oras. Ang pupuntahan–Tagaytay. Ang pinanggalingan–Quezon City. Ang hinahabol–live report sa Bandila.

Tapos na ang TV Patrol nang tiniyak ng grupo ang sunod naming lakad. Naka-set up pa kami sa New Manila, nakabantay sa demolisyon doon. Dalawang oras para humabol.

Biyernes na. Suwelduhan. At makikipagsiksikan pa kami sa mga pauwing sasakyan sa South Luzon Expressway. Na lalong sumikip sa bandang Sucat at Bicutan dahil sa nasagasaang kotse.

“Best effort” lang ang paniguro namin sa nag-aalalang opisina.

Anatomy of a web story

Online news has become the 21st-century wire service.

It can take on the speed and succinctness of radio, the depth and length of printed news, the impact and vividness of television, and combine it with the connectivity and interactivity of the Internet.

For their growing accessibility and potential as cash cows, news websites are increasingly becoming an output of “integrated” newsrooms known for traditional media.

ABS-CBN’s TV reporters are encouraged to think and work multi-platform. That means aside from Tagalog pieces for Channel 2′s TV Patrol, they file English reports for ANC and ABS-CBNnews.com, one of the Philippines’ first news sites.

The advisories reporters send to the news desk are incorporated to the website’s breaking stories. Or if they come out with fairly-written English pieces, they land full on the site.

When requirements on the field allowed, I’ve tried contributing too.

Often they are pictures taken with my Nokia 6730, like Noli De Castro’s last Araw ng Kagitingan in Bataan, the bombing of a judge’s car in Rizal, the search for bodies lost in a flooded abandoned building in Manila, and these 2:

On assignment in Lanao del Sur, I sent in my first News.com story. (Read the backstory here.)

A virtually humdrum traffic assignment at the Mendiola bridge on June 24 turned out another.

01:45:00 00:02.01.00

That’s the approximate running time of the first VO or voiceover package I edited for TV Patrol World.

This was Monday, September 28. Typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana had passed, and we were now taking a sober look at the damage it left.

How long it took to edit the piece? Almost an hour. We started to lay the audio by 5:35 p.m. and had it ready for airing just before the headlines ran at 6:30.

Residents in submerged Pasig areas still await help. Report by Jorge Cariño, ABS-CBN News, for TV Patrol World, September 28, 2009 (Click on screen grab to watch via ABS-CBN News Online)

Our Electronic News Gathering Van 4 was set up in Pasig’s De Castro subdivision, which hours earlier was knee-deep, and days before head-high in flood.

Reporter Jorge Cariño had then joined police riding a rubber boat to move displaced residents. Where he stood for his live report that night, the waters were gone.

They left behind tons of garbage–a lot not even from the place–strewn in mud. Carcasses of cats, dogs, and birds mingled with the refuse. What effects families did not move up they piled in the street, all wet and rendered useless.

For my first time with primetime, the output and the batting average was not bad.