Cip Roxas - veteran newspaper editor - writes '30'

Joel M. Sy Egco, president of the National Press Club, also announced the revered journalist’s passing on Facebook.

There were no further details about his passing, but sources close to Roxas said his remains would be cremated as he wished.

Jojo Robles, editor-in-chief of The Standard, told GMA News Online that Roxas had been seriously ill lately.

Roxas, one of the most colorful personalities in Philippine journalism, started his newspaper career as a “mechanic” in the composing room of pre-Martial Law Manila Times which he would eventually lead as executive editor in 1999.

He was long-time editor of The Manila Standard and hosted a television commentary “Times Four” in the early 1990s.

Roxas would later get appointed executive editor in the then government-controlled Journal Group of Publications.

“Laki ng utang na loob ko sa mama,” Aldrin Cardona, sports editor of the Daily Tribune who worked under Roxas in the Standard, told GMA News Online.

Moments after reports of Roxas’ passing was confirmed, Ignacio Dee, a veteran editor and sportswriter, said:  “Cipriano S. Roxas. Superb writer, good editor and what a personality!”

Writing a piece in the anniversary supplement of the Manila Times in 2014, Roxas narrated how he got his break in newspapering:

“I’ve noticed you in this newsroom every afternoon. What are you doing here?

“I work here, sir.”

“Oh, and what is it you do?”

“I’m a mechanic in the composing room.”

“You’re a laborer then?”

“Yes sir, and proud of it.”

“Do you know how to copyread?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll call for you one of these days. We’re planning an entertainment supplement to the Sunday Times Magazine.”

This exchange transpired in the early 1960s in the newsroom of The Manila Times on Florentino Torres St. in Manila’s Sta. Cruz district between Primitivo Mauricio, editor of the Sunday Times Magazine, and Cipriano Roxas, his former student who was working his way toward an AB degree.

“In a way, I’ve come full circle, having cut my journalist teeth covering the entertainment beat and putting the Sunday Times Magazine (whose editor was the late Joe Quirino) to bed every Wednesday night.

There were only four daily morning broadsheets in English then. The Manila Times (which justifiably, albeit inordinately. touted itself as having a circulation greater than all the other dailies combined.); Philippine Herald, Manila Chronicle and Manila Bulletin.

Those were heady days when a reporter had to really earn his byline. None of the “why-didn’t-I-get-a-byline” attitude so characteristic of today’s crop of reporters.

(I remember my first byline for The Times. It was a story on the French actor Alain Delon, who visited Manila to promote his film, Rocco and his Brothers. I don’t know whether the central desk – Pocholo Romualdez (now executive editor of Malaya Business Insight); Gani Yambot (former publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer); Bernie de Leon (since departed), et. al. –was just being kind to me, but get a byline I did. Perhaps it was the admission by Delon that it was all over between him and his erstwhile paramour, Romy Schneider, “a first” at the time. But I digress.)

The Times’ hexagonal central desk was under the overall guidance of Joe Bautista (Joe Luna Castro was managing editor and was not to take over as editor-in-chief until much later). On the rim were Romualdez, De Leon, Yambot, Jun Icban (now editor-in-chief of the Bulletin); and Osmudo (O.O.) Sta. Romana, the city editor. A powerhouse desk, if you ask me.

Good ole Joe B was the friendly neighborhood loan association personified. Anybody, but anybody, from the editors to the janitors in the bindery section, could touch him for a bridge loan, payable the next payday. He recorded every transaction on one of those desk calendars. That is until one day, somebody (who must have had cash flow problems), swiped the calendar. End of the Bautista Domestic Assistance Program.