"We can’t just be journalists, we also have to be entrepreneurs": An Interview with Nadia Trinidad, former Head of News Digital Media at ABS-CBN

25 years is a long time, especially for a country with such a rich history like the Philippines. Presidents, financial crises and even a global pandemic can all come and go in that time, each one altering the future of a country that holds its ability to persevere as a core value.

Nadia Trinidad saw it all, witnessing first-hand the evolution of the modern Philippines and its media market. Starting her career as a political reporter at ABS-CBN, one of the country’s leading TV broadcasters in the 1990s, she was part of the coverage of five presidential elections, two large-scale protests that sought to topple presidents, and the deadliest attack on journalists in world history. In 2022, Nadia was chosen as the head of News Digital Media at ABS-CBN.

In the last few years, ABS-CBN has faced significant challenges following ongoing political pressure. In 2020, following a series of legal challenges and disputes with the government, ABS-CBN was issued a cease-and-desist order which forced the company to immediately cease its radio and TV broadcast operations. The business suffered immensely, with the sharp fall in operating revenues leading to widespread job losses and challenging circumstances for staff who remained.

FT Strategies has had the chance to work with ABS-CBN when they participated in two Google News Initiative programmes. Most recently, they participated in a GNI programme called Digital Revenue Launchpad, which helps publishers explore diversified reader-revenue models. This is an imperative focus for ABS-CBN given the recent loss of its broadcasting franchise.

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Nadia spoke to FT Strategies shortly before she retired from the organisation she called home for over two decades, one which now faces yet another pivotal crossroads in its remarkable history.

NT: Early on, I recognised that the challenge of covering politics is in challenging the story that you see right before you. I looked up to the senior reporters who were able to look behind the ‘play’ and the ‘spin’. To truly make a name for yourself, you have to consider if what you are being told is really true, or is it a political spin? This was something I had to learn over time because the sources I had did not trust me overnight.

NT: Yes, and you have to remember that when I started in the late ‘90s, there was no social media. The journalists were in charge of the narrative and it meant that the journalists had a specific responsibility to report the facts accurately. Now, in the age of social media, there is no need for a ‘middle person’ any more and it has meant that our responsibilities as online-first journalists are different.

NT: Especially in the Philippines, this is quite pronounced. So many ordinary people don’t have access to the day-to-day nuances, the wheelings and the dealings that you hear about daily. It is - and always has been - our responsibility to provide accurate information to people outside of this space. The problem for us now is that sources can use platforms like Facebook to tell whatever stories they want - whether their self-reporting is accurate or not is out of our control.

NT: Yes, I’ve always believed journalism is a calling. When I started, I really believed that my primary responsibility was to give the audience the truth that only journalists can see. But I’ve noticed that newer reporters face much larger pressure for balance; to not upset their sources, to not have the subject's supporters be upset by the narrative, to self-censor. There is definitely still a desire to provide truthful news but there are so many external pressures now.

NT: It’s obviously been tough, both from a business sense and personally. Losing the provincial stations was a huge blow to the reach we used to have...

and I came to ABS-CBN’s News Digital team believing this from the beginning. It’s one thing to do the right thing, but it has an impact if nobody reads it and departments have to shut down if it doesn’t generate enough revenue.

As the scale of the challenges we faced really set in, we made a conscious effort to not shelter people from the financial realities that they are operating in. It took a while to get editorial teams to grasp our new realities and think more commercially. It couldn’t happen in a single meeting. We had to set up weekly forums to understand people’s personal concerns about their livelihoods.

At this point, I recognized that I had the responsibility to keep morale high despite all of the surrounding challenges. Honestly, it helped me as much as it helped them. I was able to learn that the young people had their own ideas about how news can survive, and I wouldn’t have discovered these things without actually talking to them.

NT: In the leadership role, I had a mandate to create a growth team to think about how ABS-CBN.com could grow beyond the domain. But it’s not good for morale that only a few people are responsible for the future of the company. It must be a collaborative process that is inclusive of ideas. You don’t want to miss out on the good ideas. The shyest person in the room has something to contribute. No one has a monopoly on good ideas. So we made a point of pushing growth projects that involve everyone.

NT: It guides everything we do. Our primary responsibility as an organisation is to gather hyper-local news that people need to read because it directly impacts them. Think of typhoons and hurricanes, people in affected areas don’t have a wide array of sources for their news as they do here in Metro Manila.

At least within ABS-CBN, we pursue the stories that truly matter because it is the right thing to do.

NT: It’s the journalism, it always will be. People say this is a bad time for media, which is true, but it’s also the golden age for independent online media. Mainstream media struggles to balance the interest of truth with broader survival. But independent media has the ability to not have to self-censor. Broadening the pool of quality journalism through new platforms and sources is the opportunity for great journalism to shine.

NT: News has changed significantly in how it is consumed and how it is packaged in order for people to consume it. But the core of news has not changed. It is vetted truth to serve the people who need the information.

I will always be optimistic about the future of news because there are always going to be enough responsible journalists with their hearts in the right place to join the industry.

If anything, all of the challenges faced by the media industry right now provide us with the opportunity to be introspective about where we have gone wrong in the past. This is our chance to look inwards. Have we abused our powers of access and information in the past? Can we use this time as an opportunity to reflect on how good we are as journalists, even despite all these crises?

We would not be talking about what users/audiences need if we weren’t losing them. I believe that this is the inflexion point that we need to be reflective and ask ourselves the hard-hitting questions. We have to acknowledge the mistakes that we made that got us to this point. There is hope for this industry, but we need to look back before we can move forwards.

Aaron is a consultant with experience working on subscriptions and access model strategies for clients across the world, including in Asia-Pacific. He has previous experience at PwC including audit, public sector advisory, and work with the Office of General Counsel. He studied BA International Development and MA International Political Economy, both at King's College London.