In the late 19th century, a group of young men from the Philippines—the best and the brightest in the islands—were living in Spain for advanced studies. They were not Filipinos, at least not technically. At the time, the Philippines was still a colony of Spain, and there was a racial hierarchy that muddled their national identity.

At the top of that hierarchy were the peninsulares, Spaniards born in Spain. Then there were Filipinos, which is what they called people who had Spanish parents but were born in the Philippines. Then there were mestizos, of mixed Spanish and native races. Then came the natives, who were called indios, because the white people who conquered the Southeast Asian archipelago called brown people everywhere Indians, no matter where they were in the world.

These bright young indios, fourth class citizens even in their native land, wanted to push for change while living in Spain. So what did they do?

They started a newspaper.

One of the first things they teach us in history class is the importance of La Solidaridad, the newspaper started by the reform movement in Spain that eventually inspired indios to rise up in revolt.

I thought about this story while I was gearing up for my fellowship year at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and figured it was a fun story to share with everyone at the premiere institution for journalism at Harvard University: imagine coming from a country whose founding fathers are journalists.

But while I was looking for materials using Harvard’s online library, I came across research that showed that the story wasn’t quite right. A Spanish researcher, Gloria Cano, did extensive work studying the press during that period, and in her work, she argued that the importance ascribed to La Solidaridad in Philippine history was overblown. The culprit, according to Cano: the Americans who took over from Spain, who wanted to push the narrative that they were better colonial masters because unlike the Spanish, they didn’t suppress a free press.

In fact, what Gloria Cano found was that there was already a vibrant newspaper industry in the Philippines by the late 19th century. There were more than 100 newspapers and magazines ranging from liberal to conservative, with different languages, covering news but also arts and youth culture. There was even a publication, El Hogar, written exclusively by women that aimed for a female readership.

“By 1896 the Filipino people had reached an astounding level of political know-how, mentioned by the American Government when it decided to occupy the Archipelago,” Cano wrote in her research. For this, she credited the work of national heroes like Jose Rizal, who wrote novels as well as articles in La Solidaridad, but also on democratic journalism. I found it inspiring how, even before our country was a country, our people have been looking to journalists to shine a light on issues, to help them understand the world.

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I became a journalist in 2009 for one reason: I wanted to focus my work in a field that promoted social justice. Prior to that, I was working in technology, a much more lucrative field, having graduated from Philippine Science High School before earning a Bachelor of Science degree from University of the Philippines Los Banos and a Master of Technology Management degree from U.P. Diliman. But perhaps because of all the years I spent at U.P., there was constantly a voice at the back of my head chirping: “Serve the people.”

It was an inauspicious time to join the industry. The Committee to Protect Journalists had just named the Philippines among the worst places in the world to be a journalist, primarily due to the culture of impunity prevalent given the unsolved murders of journalists speaking truth to power. Later that year, the Maguindanao Massacre happened, claiming the lives of 58 people, including 33 media workers, in what remains one of the deadliest events for the press in history. It was perpetrated by the Ampatuan clan, the most powerful political family in the region.

I was in the middle of it while beginning my career for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), for which I covered the aftermath of the massacre. My stint at the PCIJ took me around the country giving me a first-person view of the issues faced by news outlets across the country. Aside from the threat of violence, there were also continuing challenges such as political intimidation and legal harassment from entities seeking to influence coverage or silence critical reporting. There was also constant economic pressure as traditional revenue streams continued to decline, leaving many journalists especially in the countryside vulnerable to the temptations of corrupt practices.