Raul Locsin

Raul L. Locsin
Born	1932 Silay, Negros Occidental, Philippines
Died	(2003-05-24)May 24, 2003 St. Luke's Hospital, Quezon City, Philippines
Occupations	Journalist newspaper publisher
Known for	Founding Business Day / BusinessWorld
Spouse	Leticia Martillo Locsin
Children	6
Relatives	Arsenio Lacson (maternal uncle)
Awards	Ramon Magsaysay Award (1999) Philippine Press Institute Editor's Choice Award

Raul L. Locsin (1932 – May 24, 2003) was a Filipino journalist and newspaper publisher. In 1967 he founded Business Day, Southeast Asia's first daily newspaper devoted to business. During the martial-law years of President Ferdinand Marcos, Business Day survived as the capital's only independently owned newspaper and became a benchmark of accuracy. After a labor dispute forced its closure in 1987, Locsin relaunched the paper as BusinessWorld, whose shares were held by Locsin and by his former employees' pension fund, and which he published and edited until his death. He received the 1999 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts.

Early life and career

Locsin was born in 1932 in Silay, Negros Occidental, where his father published a Spanish-language newspaper, for which his mother also wrote. He began as a reporter on his father's paper before going to Manila to study liberal arts at the Ateneo de Manila, which he left after two years, later learning to fly planes and then moving into sales. His brother Alfio was business news editor of The Manila Times, and his maternal uncle was Arsenio Lacson, the journalist who later became mayor of Manila.

After eleven years working for multinational companies as a salesman, a job he disliked, Locsin took a large cut in pay in 1963 to become a reporter on the business desk of the Manila Chronicle, rising to assistant business editor within two years. He went on to help establish the Economic Monitor, the country's first business weekly, before leaving to found a newspaper of his own.

Business Day (1967–1987)

The first issue of Business Day appeared on February 27, 1967, pledging "competent and responsible reporting of the news". Locsin's aim was to make business and economics comprehensible to ordinary readers at a time when few Filipinos understood the economic vocabulary of the day. He recruited bright young graduates, sharpened them in free-wheeling editorial discussions, and formed them into research teams for exhaustive investigations; he forbade his reporters to keep the bribes routinely offered by Manila's influence-seekers. He warned advertisers that only advertising space was for sale at Business Day and never "editorial space", and instructed his editors, on a sign at the office door, to "remove your biases and leave them here".

During the martial law period, Business Day was one of five dailies allowed to publish in Manila and the only one that was independently owned. In a climate of disinformation it gained a reputation for accuracy and ran articles critical of the Marcos government. Locsin served as vice-chairman of the Philippine Council for Print Media. In 1983 he denounced the assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino in an impassioned editorial, and the paper contributed to the rising chorus of dissent that culminated in the People Power Revolution of 1986. After the revolution he opposed the new government's seizure of newspapers that had been friendly to Marcos, and reminded his readers that gross national inequalities remained, along with "corrupt patronage politics thriving on the arrogant exercise of power and public plunder". He also led in rebuilding the Philippine Press Institute after the ravages of martial law, and the national press council, devoting himself to strengthening the country's community newspapers.

BusinessWorld (1987–2003)

In 1987, after a labor strike by leftist staff members, Locsin quit rather than give in to the activists, and Business Day closed on June 5; only four months earlier he had finished repaying the newspaper's debts accumulated over two decades. About three-quarters of his former staff then picketed his home for four days, urging him to return, and set up a corporation of their own in which the employees' pension fund held shares; they appointed Locsin as their president, publisher and editor, and the paper was relaunched on July 27, 1987, as BusinessWorld. The relaunch brought with it the full computerization of the paper's production process. By 1999 BusinessWorld was the country's fourth-biggest newspaper by circulation and revenue, with an average circulation of 54,000 and an Internet edition; Locsin held 70 per cent of its stock, the rest belonging to the employees' pension fund.

In 1999, when President Joseph Estrada sued The Manila Times over a report on a power-plant contract, Locsin wrote a rare editorial defending press freedom, telling the president that "all our rights remain meaningless and defenseless without it".

Awards

In 1999 Locsin received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. The board of trustees recognised "his enlightened commitment to the principle that, above all, a newspaper is a public trust", crediting him with nurturing business reporting in the Philippines "from infancy to robust maturity".

The Philippine Press Institute honoured Locsin with its Editor's Choice Award. The accompanying citation of merit, written by the Philippine Press Council, praised "the anonymous mind that cuts and buttresses, and reorders stories, otherwise ponderous or bland or tortured, so that the reader may be better served".

Personal life and death

Locsin was married to Leticia Martillo Locsin, his executive editor at BusinessWorld, with whom he had six children: Barbara, Nonoy, Bingbing, Rina, Roman, and Kriss.

After a long illness that set in about three years earlier and included kidney failure requiring dialysis, Locsin died on May 24, 2003, at St. Luke's Hospital in Quezon City, aged 71. He lay in state at the BusinessWorld offices he had made his home in his final years, and after his cremation his ashes were taken to his alma mater, the Ateneo de Manila, for necrological services. His wife Leticia, then chief operating officer, succeeded him as president, publisher, and chairperson of BusinessWorld until her death in August 2005.