The Luzonwide News Correspondent Publishing, with its print edition and online news portal at hand, celebrates its 12 years of a roller-coaster ride in the community newspapering industry this week. It is proud to have remained steadfast in catering to readers, patrons, and supporters despite its humble beginnings.
Its maiden issue is a labor of love in journalism. It is a nostalgic one.
As if only yesterday when through sheer courage and carefree act, its founder Villamor Visaya Jr., the incumbent news correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and news stringer of GMA7 Kapuso, teamed up with his family members, friends, close associates, and acquaintances to put up a team and publish this weekly which started on June 11, 2011.
Financial difficulties during its initial two years of operations almost put this publishing entity into closure. At that time, the weekly paper is being printed at other printing presses in the province as it could not afford then to buy machines of its own.
The production cost has tripled with administrative expenses. The infusion of funds came from loans. It slowly survived and eventually got accredited by the trial courts to publish legal notices. Commercial advertisements came in trickles.
But the founder and its associates persisted and survived.
The entity eventually bought offset, letterpress, and digital machines for its operations.
Its news web portal, www.luzonwidenewscorrespondent.net was hatched. Thanks to the technical support extended by the Philippine Press Institute and the Hans Seidel Foundation. Its social media pages are also gaining wide following.
The rest is history, as they say.
Here are screenshots of the printed maiden edition’s some pages.
