editorial directorship and management of magazine publish- ing. Vergel has this astute ability to connect to his readership, whether tabloid or high-end business market. Feeling that pulse was an instinct I didn’t know I had until he made me tap it almost on a daily basis. He made me harness that instinct into a professional, even business, tool. I cemented my career as a lifestyle editor when the late Eugenio “Geny” Lopez Jr. came into my life—as publisher and owner of Manila Chronicle and ABS-CBN. From him I learned how to manage an organization. Bibsy Carballo, my journalism teacher at St. Theresa’s College, was able to pull us somehow to a world that could be far more exciting than the rallies and pickets of that turbulent time—the world of the printed word and the pursuit of the big story, the scoop.
“Loyalty, integrity, competence—and loyalty,” “Kapitan,” as we called Geny, would tell me repeatedly, were the assets to look for in people. His character was such that his people develop malasakit for his company, his family and, most of all, for him. “If people are to stay with you, you must make it worth their while. Pay them well,” he’d tell us often, and he put his money where his mouth was.
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