The narrative of the Philippines as a nation built by struggles for freedom, in which free speech and press freedom are integral, has often overlooked the contribution of small, sometimes ephemeral, but often vocal publications that Georgina Reyes Encanto has termed the “community press.” In retrieving the accounts of newspapers that the mainstream history of the press may have exiled to the shadows, she offers a significant argument that rewrites the history of journalism in the country—that is, much like how the nation is forged in political struggle, the idea of the community press is also constructed in the same struggle. In other words, community newspapers are bound up with the long anticolonial resistance and its aftermath of contesting the successive rule of the native elites and a dictator.

Overall, the book tells a fascinating story of the community press, that while some parts of it have been told before, the central argument of the book that the community press has a revolutionary tradition makes the retelling salient.

— Ma. Diosa Labiste

Assistant Professor of Journalism

(UP College of Mass Communication)

and community journalist