AA Patawaran, former lifestyle editor for 30 years, reflects on the life-changing transformations brought about by the pandemic, examining not only the evolution of work but also the profound changes in our collective psyche and daily lives
I remember the last time I checked out of Manila Bulletin, where I spent 18 years of my career in lifestyle journalism, which spanned over 30 years since I joined the industry in 1994. I clocked out on my phone at 8pm sharp, using a software solution the company had recently adopted. There was something bittersweet about how my fingers lingered over the screen as the seconds ticked away. It was a Saturday I spent in bed, waiting for the critical hour, having said my goodbyes in every chat group tied to what would promptly become my former life.
It took me more than five years to do this. Even when unsure, I knew I would walk away from a job and a life, a dream I had carried since childhood. I was leaving behind the rhythm, the identity, the certainty of an entire existence I had built around words. It should have felt like an ending. Instead, it felt like breaking the surface after holding my breath too long.
The pandemic did not start this undoing; it only quickened it, as it made the world of work shift in ways we had never imagined. People walked away from careers they had built over decades, not in rebellion, but in quiet recognition that something no longer fit. A report from McKinsey found that nearly 40 per cent of workers considered quitting their jobs in the aftermath of the pandemic. In the United States alone, 71.6 million people separated from their jobs between April 2021 and April 2022. Among Filipino workers, 4.6 million quit their jobs amid the pandemic, contributing to the 176 per cent increase in voluntary resignation across all industries in the Philippines, according to Sprout Solutions. It was not just burnout, not just exhaustion, but something more profound, a reckoning with time, meaning, and the fragile nature of a life spent working toward an ever-shifting goal.
Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist, described a phenomenon he called languishing as not exhaustion, not despair, but a quiet fog, an absence of fulfilment, a feeling many carried through those years, the weight of a world that had tilted and left them unsure of their footing. Work has always been the ground beneath me. But the pandemic revealed the cracks in that foundation, making me ask a question I had never dared to consider. What if I let it go?
Journalism was changing in ways I could no longer ignore. The pursuit of stories, the search for something new, had been replaced by the hunger for numbers. Not readers, but views. Not insight, but engagement. Algorithms decided what was worth writing, and journalists followed, recalibrating their instincts to the pulse of what was trending. Diana Vreeland, my idol in journalism, had once said, “You’re not supposed to give people what they want; you’re supposed to give them what they don’t know they want yet.”
Journalism was never everyone’s medium but a tool for shaping discourse among the informed. Newspapers catered to literate elites before mass literacy expanded their reach. Even in the digital age, engagement with quality journalism still skews toward those actively seeking it. But now, the industry caters to the known, the predictable, the already viral. Studies show that online readers spend seconds on an article before moving on, unwilling to pay even a small fee for what was once considered valuable.
The gatekeeping power of traditional media has weakened. Now, anyone with an internet connection can produce and disseminate content. The challenge is no longer access but discernment—choosing what to believe in an overwhelming sea of information. Journalism has had to redefine its role, not just as a news source, but as a guide through the noise, helping those willing to listen to separate fact from fiction.
