by Jasmine Gonzales
MANILA – The country was stunned late Thursday night, December 24, upon news confirming the death of Letty Jimenez – Magsanoc, the esteemed editor-in-chief of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI).
The 74-year-old veteran journalist was struck down by a heart attack at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig. She was married to Dr. Carlitos Magsanoc and mother to their three children Kara Magsanoc, Dr. Nikko Magsanoc, and Dr. Marti Magsanoc.
She is the longest-serving and the first woman EIC of the PDI, leading the newspaper during the brutal dictatorship of the late President Ferdinand Marcos – a love affair with the broadsheet spanning 24 years.
In his eulogy, President Benigno Aquino III looked up to “Tita Letty” as an institution.
“And with institutions, you tend to forget that they are also people, with a beginning and an end. Even if I knew she had a chronic condition, there was the belief that, like every other instance of her having an illness, she would bounce back—livelier and more feisty than ever. There was a period of disbelief, tinged with sadness for the passing of such an icon and friend,” he said.
Magsanoc’s career in journalism began in St. Teresa’s College, Manila when she contributed feature stories for the Philippines’ Sunday Times Magazine.
She then took up a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri and returned to the Philippines in 1969, working for Marcos-controlled Manila Bulletin as the women’s section editor of the Bulletin’s Sunday Magazine Panorama.
Magsanoc’s forced resignation as editor in chief of Panorama following a series of defiant articles is seen as one key moment in the anti-Marcos movement in the 1980s. She would later help found the Inquirer, and eventually become its editor in chief in 1991.
Even in recent times, the Inquirer kept its anti-establishment roots under Magsanoc, standing up to the regime of President Joseph Estrada when his allies led an advertising boycott of the newspaper in 2000. Estrada was eventually ousted in a military-backed revolt in January 2001.
Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle described her as one of the “great storytellers” in the Philippines during her wake at the Aeternum at the Heritage Memorial Park in Taguig City.
“We are thankful that during our lifetime we were able to see great storytellers, including Letty. We are also thankful that during that time we became part of their stories, with the story of our lives having also been influenced by their storytelling,” he said.
