Dante turned Manila Times into a world-class paper
THERE are newspaper owners who merely keep a publication alive as a business enterprise. Then there are a very few who transform a newspaper into a national institution that shapes the intellectual and political life of a country. Dante A. Ang belonged to the latter category.
That is why his passing on May 5 marks not merely the death of a businessman or publisher, but the end of a rare era in Philippine journalism.
Dante made The Manila Times a world-class newspaper not because of its circulation, but because he understood earlier than most publishers what journalism in the 21st century would become.
He grasped long before others that newspapers could no longer survive merely by reporting what happened yesterday. Television, the internet and later social media had already destroyed that monopoly over information.
Eventually, artificial intelligence would further homogenize straight news reporting, making most newspapers carry nearly identical stories.
Dante sensed that what readers would increasingly seek was not raw information but interpretation, analysis, context and argument. That insight transformed The Manila Times.
Ironically, Dante was not a traditional newspaperman shaped by the rigid newsroom culture of old media. He was an entrepreneur, political strategist, media innovator and risk-taker. Such personalities often irritate journalists because they refuse to worship old conventions. But it was precisely because Dante was not imprisoned by obsolete journalism dogma that he saw where the media was heading.
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Dante had surprised me back in 2001. I met him only once or twice when then-vice president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo introduced him as her public relations adviser. I was then senior vice president and editor in chief of inq7.net, the partnership between the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA7, after 11 years with the Far Eastern Economic Review, then Asia’s most respected regional magazine.
Spokesman
Out of nowhere, Dante called me and informed me that Arroyo had followed his recommendation to appoint me presidential spokesman. I asked him: Why me?
In his deep baritone voice, he replied that I had credibility as a journalist and, from my writings, demonstrated the ability to articulate what the president wanted to communicate to the nation.
That decision altered the trajectory of my life. Having once fought the State as a ranking cadre of the Communist Party of the Philippines, I suddenly became a Cabinet official of the very State I once sought to overthrow.
It also revealed one of Dante’s greatest strengths: his extraordinary eye for talent and his willingness to trust people he believed could deliver.
That same management philosophy later shaped The Manila Times.
After my five-year stint as ambassador to Greece from 2006 to 2010, the Inquirer again got me as a regular columnist, and I was assured of a fast-tracked career there. Then once more, out of the blue, Dante called me up and proposed we meet halfway between his Las Piñas residence and my home in a town in Cavite, so I couldn’t give the excuse that I don’t like to travel all the way to the metropolis for a chit-chat.
He offered me a thrice-weekly column prominently teased from the front page, and to help him straighten out his then-problematic editorial staff. A crafty businessman he certainly was, he tacked on the additional work of heading his journalism school, and straightening out the editorial staff which had at that time serious integrity issues.
I wasn’t at all interested as The Manila Times was a struggling even mediocre paper that changed ownership twice before Dante quietly acquired it in 2001. Many believed he acquired it as he saw a lot of value in its 1950s-era building — which turned out to be true as the many tenants in small offices there made it a cash cow.
Persuasive
However, Dante had this persuasive skill he used a decade ago when he convinced me to be Macapagal-Arroyo’s spokesman: “Tulungan mo na lang ako, ako bahala sa iyo. ”
Some push factor was the fact that the Inquirer’s Yellow editor was starting to sense that I didn’t belong there, especially after I debunked the black propaganda of the Aquino III administration’s allegations that then-Chief Justice Renato Corona had huge amounts of dollars in his bank accounts (the same trick President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now pulling on Vice President Sara Duterte).
What persuaded me to help Dante though was his innovative vision. He wanted opinion writing to become the cutting edge of The Manila Times.
This was revolutionary in Philippine journalism. Traditionally, newspapers treated opinion pages almost as decorative appendages to the “real” business of reporting news. Even today, two of the largest newspapers, the Inquirer and the Manila Bulletin, have mostly one-paged opinion sections.
Dante reversed that model. He recognized that readers increasingly wanted not merely facts but explanations — why events were happening, who benefited, who manipulated narratives, and what larger forces were shaping society.
In effect, Dante anticipated the future of journalism years before most publishers understood it.
Years before “media convergence” became fashionable jargon, Dante immediately embraced my proposal that The Manila Times integrate social media voices into mainstream journalism. At that time, many traditional editors dismissed online commentators as unserious outsiders. Dante instead saw them as the future, and followed my suggestions to take in such columnists as Ben Kritz, Malou Tiquia and Antonio Contreras. Sass Rogando Sasot was in the batch I proposed, but begged off after a year. Soon, other writers, including well-known writers such as Yen Makabenta and Francisco Tatad, found it a respectable platform to join.
The Manila Times’ prestige rose sharply because it ceased being merely another conventional broadsheet and became instead an arena of strong ideas and vigorous debate.
Limits
He agreed with my proposal that within reasonable limits, columnists should be allowed to write lengthy analytical pieces rather than being imprisoned by the traditional 800- to 1,000-word limit.
This may seem minor, but it was actually transformative. Philippine journalism has long suffered from oversimplification — complex political and economic realities compressed into shallow narratives because of arbitrary space constraints. Dante trusted readers’ intelligence. He believed serious readers wanted depth rather than spoon-fed simplifications.
That was a world-class instinct.
The greatest newspapers globally — whether The New York Times, Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal — are not defined merely by reporting events. They shape discourse through interpretation, analysis and intellectual diversity. Dante wanted The Manila Times to evolve in that direction.
Perhaps most remarkable was that he pursued this vision without demanding ideological conformity.
Dante and I had different political persuasions — reflected in the fact that former president Arroyo and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. were both at his wake on the first day. Yet he almost never interfered with my columns. He never behaved like many publishers who panic whenever a columnist challenges establishment narratives or offends powerful interests.
In one instance, he toned down the bite of one of my pieces, but even then he first showed me his revisions for my approval. That editorial confidence is rare in Philippine media.
Too many publishers reduce newspapers into instruments of political patronage or corporate public relations. Dante instead understood that controversy, argument and strong personalities were signs of a living newspaper, not weaknesses. He even allowed me to criticize the newspaper in my column, and point out that certain columns of my colleagues were pure nonsense.
Indeed, one reason The Manila Times became so influential under him was precisely because it consistently published perspectives excluded or marginalized elsewhere. Readers knew that whether they agreed with its columnists or not, they would encounter vigorous thinking rather than sanitized consensus.
One anniversary theme associated with Dante reportedly stated: “To honor the past and pave the way to the future.” That may well be the best summary of his achievement.
Founded in 1898, The Manila Times is the country’s oldest surviving English-language newspaper. Many legacy papers become prisoners of nostalgia, clinging desperately to dying formulas. Dante instead modernized the paper without severing it from its institutional heritage.
He preserved the newspaper’s seriousness while reinventing its form.
Success for him was not merely profits or circulation. It was the fulfillment of building an institution with lasting national significance. It was transforming The Manila Times into a newspaper that mattered intellectually and politically.
And he succeeded. Many publishers run newspapers. Very few redefine what newspapers should become.
Dante did.
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Dante turned Manila Times into a world-class paper
Source: Breaking News PH
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