DAGUPAN CITY—The Sunday Punch marked a milestone in
Pangasinan community journalism as it quietly celebrated Saturday its 50th anniversary sans fanfare.

Founded in 1956 by the late Ermin Garcia Sr,, The Sunday Punch has gone through several ups and downs and continued its niche as Pangasinan’s Leading Newspaper.

Ermin Garcia Jr, the papers’ publisher-editor and son of the late Ermin, recalled in his column Punchline that “many thought (and believed) the irreverent PUNCH finally wrote 30” with the gun slaying of his father in his office by Rodolfo Soriano, a Lingayen councilor, in 1966. The elder Garcia was murdered due to a payroll padding expose he wrote in the paper.

“Wallowing deep in debt and left with a completely shocked editorial staff, the PUNCH was literally laid inside the ICU room of community journalism,” Garcia recalled.

But there were believers and friends who refused to give up on the vision and idealism of my father, he said.

Garcia said the Martial era was a very difficult period for The PUNCH. After being ordered closed for publishing a special issue about a suspected but “undeclared martial law”, on the very same day the media establishments were already under heavy guard to prevent them from continuing publication,
he said they thought it was the end for The PUNCH.

But after a clearance from Camp Crame arrived for the paper to continue to publish, he said they were torn between closing the paper and deprive editorial staff a regular source of livelihood or keep it open to keep the information flowing and provide livelihood for the staff.

He chose the latter and suspended writing editorials. He lifted the Socratic motto “No man is to be reverenced more than the Truth” from the paper’s masthead and substituted it with “In Service to the People of Pangasinan”.

Now, the paper’s masthead contains the original motto.

“It was a time when The PUNCH’s brand of journalism was continuously taunted by the military and there was nothing that I could do about it. It was a tortuous existence but in hindsight, I am glad I chose to make the PUNCH live through it because if I didn’t, The PUNCH would not be here, and what it is today, stronger and vibrant”,” Garcia said.

He admitted that the paper lived down its humiliation in those times to be recognized later as one of the most successful community newspapers in Asia in a UNESCO study.

The PUNCH also became the first Filipino community newspaper to publish online in 1997 in partnership with Bitstop Inc.

The prestigious Philippine Press Institute and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation have acknowledged the paper as the most outstanding community newspaper in business and economic reporting, science technology and environmental issues reporting and best in editorial page.

“All these citations became our vindication knowing that two years before my father was killed in his editorial office, The PUNCH was recognized the Most Outstanding Provincial Newspaper in the Philippines,” Garcia said.

Fifty years after it was founded, Garcia gathered his team of editors, reporters, correspondents and columnists in a simple luncheon celebration at Star Plaza Hotel in this city last Saturday.