Monday, December 11, 2006

Filipino boxer Joan Tipon, right, plants a right hook on the face of Thai Woorapoj Petchkoom *

Bacolod boxer nears gold: radio version

The Philippines' Joan Tipon assured himself of a silver medal last night, while compatriots Godfrey Castro and Genebert Basadre settled for bronze medals in the 15th Asian Games boxing competitions in Doha, Qatar.
The 24-year-old Tipon, born in Bacolod City, won against Thailand’s Olympic silver medalist Woorapoj Petchkoom by superiority in the bantamweight semis, although the match had ended in a 13-all tie.
Tipon will fight for the gold against South Korea’s Soon Chul Han --- a 28-19 winner over Mongolian Badar Enkhbat in the semifinals --- on Wednesday night Another Filipino pug, Violito Payla, will battle Thailand’s Somjit Jongjohor for the flyweight gold tonight.
Castro, an Asian Games rookie, settled for a bronze, after losing, 20-40, to Thailand’s Suban Pannon in the lightflyweight semifinals. Basadre bowed to China’s Hu Qing, 18-29, in the lightweight division and limped home with another bronze.

Bacolod boxer nears gold

Bacolod City-born boxer Joan Tipon moved a victory closer to an Asian Games gold medal, after stunning Olympic silver medalist Woorapoj Petchkoom of Thailand last night in a thrilling bantamweight semifinal clash in Doha, Qatar.
The 24-year-old Tipon, a lanky boxer from Purok Sibucao, Barangay Banago, scored on power punches and won the match by superiority, although the scoreline indicated a 13-all tie after the fourth and final round.
With the victory, Tipon assured himself of a silver medal. He will fight for the gold against South Korea’s Soon Chul Han --- a 28-19 winner over Mongolian Badar Enkhbat in the semifinals --- Wednesday night
Another Filipino pug, Violito Payla, will battle Thailand’s Somjit Jongjohor for the flyweight gold tonight.
A win against the South Korean will put Tipon on an elite list of Negrense prizefighters that includes Olympic silver medalist Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco and Reynaldo Galido of Bago City and Elias Recaido Jr. of Bacolod. The trio won golds in the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima, Japan.
Tipon, a Southeast Asian Games gold medalist, actually avenged the loss of another Negrense boxer, Godfrey Castro, who settled for a bronze medal, following a 20-40 setback at the hands of Thailand’s Suban Pannon.
Genebert Basadre, another SEA Games gold medalist, also settled for a bronze, after losing to China’s Hu Qing, 18-29, in the lightweight division.
Marking his first Asian Games appearance, Castro, 21, put up a brave fight in the first two rounds but lost to the experienced Thai. Filipinos inside the Aspire Hall 5 booed the judges each time Castro’s landed punches failed to register on the computerized scoreboard.
But Pannon proved too cunning for Castro and the Cadiz-born fighter wilted in the third round, before the referee stopped the fight one minute and 46 seconds into the penultimate round due to the 20-point margin rule.
Two fights later, it was Tipon’s time to turn the tables on a Thai fighter. The BacoleƱo, who was also supported by Talisay City early in his amateur career, trailed, 2-4, the points coming from two solid shots to Petchkoom’s head.
A former Asian Boxing Championship outstanding boxer awardee, Tipon, who uses his counter-punching skills to pile up points, uncharacteristically went on attack-mode, tying the count at 5-all at the end of the third. He seized the initiative by landing a pair of left-right combinations in a rapid exchange for a 9-8 advantage, paving the way for a thrilling finish.
The Negrense boxer reached the 13-point mark ahead but Petchkoom, who employed some dirty tactics by clinching Tipon everytime he was at the losing end of the exchange, tied the match with less than a minute left.*Cedelf P. Tupas

Filipino-British striker Phil Younghusband, a Chelsea reserve, scores against Brunei

RP booters triumph

The setting could not have been more perfect.
On the same field where they suffered a heart-breaking defeat last year, the Philippine Football Team redeemed itself and accomplished its goal of gaining a slot in the Asean Football Championships, after a clinical beating of Brunei, 4-1, yesterday at the Panaad Park and Stadium in Bacolod City.
The win comes as a welcome development for the country’s football program, which has been often overshadowed by the extreme popularity of basketball and battered by criticism for a string of disappointing results in international competitions. The losses have sent the Philippines down to 195 in the world football rankings, the second-worst among Southeast Asian countries.
“We would not have accomplished our goal (to qualify) without the support of the crowd,” national coach Aris Caslib said.
The Filipino booters played to a crowd of 18,000 in a 1-2 setback to Laos. About 12,000 witnessed them blank Timor Leste, 7-0, Tuesday. Last Saturday, 15,000 cheered for them on their way to a narrow 1-0 win over Cambodia.
The Philippines has been drawn with three-time winner Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia in Bangkok from Jan. 12 to Feb. 3, 2007.
“We wanted to give something back to our supporters after falling short last year,” Caslib said, referring to their Southeast Asian Games debacle last year.
Playing before a crowd of about 20,000, the Filipinos squandered a one-goal lead and fell to Malaysia, 2-4, in Nov. 29, 2005, eliminating them from the SEAG.
But the Philippines was not to be denied a glorious ending barely a year later as Fil-British striker Phil Younghusband, US-based Anton del Rosario and Iloilo-born winger Emelio Caligdong joined forces to take the sting out of the Brunei side.
Despite only needing a draw to qualify, the Filipinos attacked without let-up right from the opening whistle and were rewarded by Del Rosario’s beautifully-struck free kick from 30 yards that ricocheted off the post and into goal in the 25th minute.
Extreme pressure in front of the Brunei goal in the 54th minute saw Younghusband volley home his saved header to double the lead.
"The boys did everything to win. They are the players who wanted to change the image of Philippine football," Caslib said.
Caligdong’s opportunistic strike in the 73rd minute gave the RP booters an unassailable 3-0 advantage, before Younghusband struck again from just outside the box nine minutes from time.

Going Beyond the Comfort Zone

Convergent journalism is starting to take shape in the Philippines with huge media companies like ABS-CBN, GMA-7 and the Philippine Daily Inquirer tapping various media in a bid to reach audiences and meet the unwavering demand for information. For a newspaper company like the Inquirer, venturing into television, online news, among others, has actually become a means for improving itself and its image as the country’s leading newspaper. The Inquirer is probably the newspaper in the Philippines that has gone through the most innovation. It teamed up with GMA to create the news portal, www.inq7.net. Though the move of creating an online news website is already a worldwide trend, I also considered in, some way, as a defense mechanism as the print journalism battles declining readership and circulation. Maximizing manpower has become critical in this case. It has become a challenge of improving skills, learning new techniques in reporting, without compromising quality, or simply put: Going beyond the comfort zone.
As far as I know, multi-media journalists in the Philippines have a number of must-haves, a PDA that is used as a cellular phone, video camera and a digital camera and a computer notebook or lap-top. When there is breaking news, the cellular phone comes in handy. Television and radio reporters are actually reporting right at the thick of the action. The news story on the website would follow a few minutes later. This was the case recently when ABS-CBN and GMA covered the promulgation of the Subic Rape Case, involving four American servicemen, who were the subject of a complaint by a Filipina.

Nobody's Perfect

Convergence demands a lot of skills and the key to understanding this form of journalism requires an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. And each medium is not perfect. My medium, print, as the Convergent Journalism book says, is portable and permanent. The space provides reporters to provide readers the lowdown on the news, which is an advantage to a normal television and radio newscast, which offers only a short time for news. And because sidebar stories are a staple when a news story has a great impact on society, the space allows these kinds of articles to get published.
But As much as it has become a historical document for the day, an error in a published report can also raise credibility, editing and quality-control issues for journalists. Only in the next issue can the error be rectified but sometimes, the damage has already been done.
Television, I must say, is the most powerful medium because it combines sound, visuals and text. While print journalists toil to find the appropriate words to describe the events and setting, a powerful video can easily do the trick for television. Television best exemplifies the time element of the news. It can bring news as it happens. This brings viewers and listeners closer to the action. But television and radio also has its downsides. One, it is easy to miss and, unless you were able to record it, the information is gone, as the book says. Time constraints also prevent broadcast journalists to go deeper into the story.
The advent of technology and the never-ending demand for information of audiences has given birth to online journalism. Here, news is updated by the minutes or the hours and has unlimited space, which is better compared to a newspaper, constrained by space limitations and published once a day. Some news websites also offer newscasts so it is capable of offering the best of both worlds. It is an accepted fact, however, that it takes a lot of manpower and money to run a news website. But for a third-world country like the Philippines, online journalism is still in its early stages, probably because only a small percentage in the population of 87 million are able to access the internet.