MANILA – The morning of October 6, 2016 saw Filipinos waking up, seating themselves at their respective breakfast tables, and opening up their favorite newspapers but probably thinking that something was amiss. Readers and subscribers of the Philippine Daily Inquirer were shocked to find a new layout, a new look, and a redesign of both the newspaper as well as its website and mobile platforms.
“We’ve been around for 30 years. Some people think we’ve been around forever,” notes Javier Vicente “JV” Rufino, Director for Mobile and Social Media for the Inquirer in an exclusive interview with adobo. “People think of us as a traditional newspaper when we’ve actually been multiplatform for years.”
JV shares that the germ of the idea for the redesign and reboot began when a friend of his noted that the Inquirer newspaper and the Inquirer website looked so different from each other. “The difference became more pronounced when we went into mobile, and I said we’d better unify so people can feel our reach,” he notes.
“I had heard Mario (Garcia of Garcia Media, the firm that took on the project) speak before in Kuala Lumpur, but I was intimidated,” JV says. “Anyway, I figured you lose nothing by asking, so I cold-called him one night, which led to an email inquiry, a Skype conversation, and a workshop in Manila.”
The workshop was JV’s way of introducing the Inquirer’s board of directors to Garcia and the notion of changing the paper’s iconic look in a big way. “If the board didn’t get a good vibe, then that was that,” he bares. “But they liked him, and the process began.”
Asked if the Inquirer side had any specifics in mind leading into the consultation with Garcia Media, JV says, “Well we were very clear that our readers expected certain things from us. There were a variety of pegs. The New York Times, The Guardian, but we went into it with an open mind.”
“How often do you reboot a 30-year old company?” JV asks rhetorically. “Because that’s what it is, a reboot.”
The new Inquirer media platform—where the group’s reporters, writers, editors, and production staff are integrated to function as a single seamless unit—is meant to address the growing demand for 24/7 news delivered rapidly over several digital channels, while emphasizing the role of the newspaper that will continue to play a central role in the information delivery cycle.
“My whole career in Inquirer has been on the digital side,” JV says as he looks back at nearly two decades with the Inquirer Group. “So this redesign ties in all our platforms. Imagine if the Inquirer went online in 2016 rather than in 1985. What would it look like? How would it deliver and source news? So whether it’s web, mobile, tablet, print or smartwatch, it feels like a single Inquirer.”
