(Note: This feature first appeared in South Shore, a magazine which was an entry to the 2017 Blue Feather Awards. It is published under “Mindanawon,” about people who have contributed something to Mindanao or those who have excelled in their chosen profession. We are reprinting this with the author’s permission.)
FROM SMALL TOWN TO THE WORLD
In an article written by Antonio M. Ajero, award-winning television journalist Howie Severino was quoted: “I have been following his environmental journalism for several years, and have been impressed by his prolific output, his wide range of reading, and his concern for his community and country. When other journalists have chosen to move to Manila to take advantage of the resources in the big city, he has opted to stay in Mindanao and practice his profession there.”
Severino was talking about a a print journalist named Henrylito D. Tacio, who hails from Bansalan, Davao del Sur. He came to Davao City when he attended the University of Mindanao. But it was while he was still in high school that he discovered his knack for writing when his classmates complained that his way of writing subjects for formal theme was very different from the examples their teacher was giving them.
His English teacher had to explain to the class that Tacio had his own style of writing. “Who knows, he may become a writer in the coming years,” she said.
He did. First, he started writing for various magazines in Manila like Mod, Woman’s Home Companion, and Expressweek when he was still in college. Later on, he also wrote for Woman Today, Mr. & Ms., and Philippine Panorama (the Sunday supplement of then Bulletin Today).
“I usually write mostly theme issues like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Year’s and anniversaries,” Tacio said in an exclusive interview. In those days, he loved collecting some quotable quotes, which later on became handy when he started writing columns and issues for EDGE Davao.
After college, he continued writing as a freelance. In 1986, everything changed when he interviewed Harold Ray Watson, the director of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC), just 10 kilometers away from he was living. The American missionary just received the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for international understanding.
A few days after the interview was published in Panorama, he got a letter asking him to come back to the center. During the conversation, Watson asked him if he could work as the center’s information officer. He accepted the offer.
Since he was already writing for Manila publications, Tacio decided to try writing for the local papers in Davao. He sent some of his writings to Peryodiko Dabaw (which would later on become Sunstar Davao). He also started writing two columns: “Regarding Henry” and “Agribiz Jottings.”
Ajero, then the paper’s editor-in-chief, saw his talent for writing and asked him if he would like to write for the Press Foundation of Asia, a Manila-based news organization which released a weekly dispatch (DEPTHnews) throughout Asia. He gave him the address where to send the articles – and the rest was history.
In 1989, veteran journalist Juan Mercado asked him during a training for community journalists held at Los Baños, Laguna if he had already a passport. He answered affirmatively. “Six months earlier, I got my passport without any intention of going abroad,” he said. “But I had this itch to go abroad.”
A month later after that incident, Tacio was in Bangkok, Thailand, attending the regional food security seminar at the office of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It wasn’t his first trip to the city; in later year, he came back to serve as consultant for a forestry book entitled In Search of Excellence: Exemplary Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific (which had also a Chinese version).
The 1990s saw Tacio winning prestigious awards in a row. In 1999, he was elevated to the Hall of Fame in science reporting by the Philippine Press Institute, making him the only one to get such distinction (having winning two first prizes, one second prize and two runner-ups). The following year, he clinched the coveted Journalist of the Year given by the Rotary Club of Manila, outclassing other journalists even those from Metro Manila.
The article he wrote for Mod entitled, “Who says AIDS doesn’t matter?” won him the Best Journalist for Print in the AIDS writing contest, sponsored by the AIDS Society of the Philippines, also in 1999. Part of the prize was an all-expense paid trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for an international AIDS gathering.
The organizers saw his reports published in both local and national papers and so he was again invited to attend two more AIDS conferences: one in Melbourne, Australia and another in Durban, South Africa. In the latter, he was able to meet personally Nobel peace laureate Nelson Mandela and Hollywood actor Danny Glover (of Lethal Weapon series distinction).
During the 8th Bright Leaf Agriculture Journalism Awards, Tacio was adjudged winner in the Best Agriculture Feature Story-National for his article “The prospects of swine industry in the Philippines,” which came out in Marid Agribusiness Magazine. A trip to Beijing, China was part of the prize.
In the 9th Bright Leaf Agriculture Journalism Awards, he again won the same distinction (but for the regional paper) for his series on food security and issues, which were published in EDGE Davao. All that year’s winners went to Hanoi, Vietnam.
His love for writing science (“I don’t know why only very few Filipino journalists are interested to write science,” he says) paid off when he got a scholarship to attend a gathering of science journalists from all over the world in Montreal, Canada.
Tacio also love writing about the environment. So much so that he was able to attend three international conferences on coral reefs held in various countries: Bali, Indonesia; Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA; and Cairns, Australia.
The first time he came to the United States was in 2000 when he was discussing on how to write a paper on water and population with award-winning book author and journalist Don Hinrichsen. It was done at the office of UN Population Fund in New York City.
For the first time in his life, he experienced what winter was all about. When he stayed with his sister Elena and her family in Hibbing, Minnesota, he had his first white Christmas ever. “I even sang ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ as the snow flakes fell,” he recalled.
The following year, both authors presented the output of their report at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. “It was my first time to be at the capital of the US and it was really exciting,” he said. “I had fun time going to the Mall,” he added, referring to the all the museums that lined up all the way from the US Congress building to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Museum.
Indeed, Tacio has gone a long, long way already as a journalist. In the Ajero feature, multi-awarded American photojournalist Don Rutledge had this to say about Tacio’s method of writing: “I have been deeply impressed by his journalistic ability to take vital subjects and discuss them through his writing ability. A most recent article is the one he did on cancer. He takes the subject, makes a solid study of it, and gives us valuable details what we need to know. Seem that he does this in all of his writings rather than just a few situations. He is a journalist far beyond the normal.”
