The Very COMMendable Life of Atty. Legaspi
- DONNA ALYSSA MABIASEN
- Jun 27
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
You may also read this interview article in Medium: https://medium.com/@2231244/the-very-commendable-life-of-atty-legaspi-e0f8cd5a0297
One of the many public attorneys in Pangasinan was once a Saint Louis University (SLU) Student, a bar exam taker, and now an all-around lawyer, but what really is behind Atty. Legaspi’s drive for handling justice?
On March 15, 2010 in the province of Pangasinan, Atty. Gretchen Pastrana Legaspi was only just getting started to work at GMA’s regional news program in the North Central Luzon called ‘Balitang Amianan’ for the afternoon segment when suddenly a producer from another GMA news program under GMA Dagupan called ‘Primera Balita’ called her up saying that they don’t have enough staff for the position of a production assistant in its morning segment whose job is to basically type the spiel of the anchor.
“Gretch, maybe you can pitch in in the morning (segment),” the producer said to her, driving Atty. Legaspi's decision to try out this new opportunity even though she was still at the beginning of her journey towards the media industry.
She has gotten far enough with her job as a production assistant that after two months, the producer of Balitang Amianan’s morning segment who Atty. Legaspi later on introduced as Ms. Red, called her again to ask if she can pitch in as a production assistant for Primera Balita. This officially became her jumpstart of working in the media later on.
As she embarks on her journey, that is when her observations come into play. In the two news programs she was working on, Primera Balita’s morning segment usually delivers light news due to its airing time exactly matching the volume of traffic in the rush hour meanwhile Balitang Amianan had mostly delivered hard news types.
It takes a great deal of patience for someone like Atty. Legaspi to comply with Primera Balita’s requirements for them to work so early since their call time is at 4:00 A.M. but despite these challenges, she claims her experiences in this news program to be fun. Experiences such as witnessing skilled news anchors which includes the likes of CJ Torida and Joyce Segui in which her position as a teleprompter required her working with Ms. Red who typed the spiels of the anchors whereas Atty. Legaspi would input the soft copy of what Ms. Red has written in the teleprompter machine where Atty. Legaspi then facilitated its delivery on how the scripts of the anchors should go.
Soon, Atty. Legaspi had eventually gotten removed from Primera Balita due to the program’s cancellation along with all the other employees because of GMA having to reduce its expenses which made her focus more on her fourth year of law school in PHINMA-University of Pangasinan. Though she passed the bar exam, she still shared how fun it was for her back then as a student in SLU enrolling in the Mass Communication program to have courses related to magazines since her dream back then in high school was to be a part of a magazine copy.
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