THE long-held dream of the Philippine Daily Inquirer to expand into radio may finally see fruition this year.

According to the grapevine, the owners of the country?s leading broadsheet tabloid have already purchased a property in Malabon for the transmitter tower while quietly lobbying key congressmen?a no-no among the Inquirer?s politically correct, anti-administration editors?for the crucial franchise approval.

It is not immediately clear whether the planned Inquirer radio would broadcast in AM or FM frequency, or both, or whether it would also be a news-driven station, to compete with the likes of dzMM, dzBB, and dzRH.

What is clear, though, is that the radio station would be under the control and supervision of Paolo Prieto, the youngest and most-laid back of the four children of Inquirer chairman Marixi Rufino Prieto who has long made his radio-centric preference known within their expanded family.

Assigned by the family as chief executive and president of the still money-losing Inquirer.net Web site, the young Prieto was described in mid-2008 in an Inquirer.net story as ?taking charge, leading a company on a revolutionary ride to the future of news and information delivery.?

The radio plan apparently hews with the management proposal for the Inquirer reporters to prepare themselves to being assigned to the graveyard shift, and for the profitable newspaper to absorb the losing Web affiliate.

?Journalists get paid for diverse online content,? the young Prieto was quoted as telling an Ateneo de Manila-Konrad Adenaur Foundation-sponsored forum of emerging leaders, describing the merging of print, radio, and television industries and the disappearance of walls between media platforms.

To survive as a journalist tomorrow, you will have to be more than a voice talent, a writer or a personality, the Inquirer.net report continued. (It was not clear whether the statement was Prieto?s or the reporter?s.)

?You will have to be multi-skilled as a journalist,? Prieto was then quoted as saying. ?Journalists should take advantage of new technologies if they want to be part of the new media revolution.?

PAL targets Northwest breakfast

After decades of conceding the morning market, the Philippine Airlines is now keen to take a bite of the long-uncontested territory of Northwest Airlines.

No less than PAL president Jaime Bautista has confirmed the flag carrier?s plan to launch a new daily non-stop service to the US West Coast that leaves Manila in the morning, just like the two Northwest flights.

The morning flight is expected to be launched by the fourth quarter, when PAL shall have taken delivery of the first of the two Boeing 777s, Bautista said.

But the new service, to complement the two evening flights to the West Coast that PAL now currently operates, would still have to depend on the US Federal Aviation Administration?s returning the Philippine civil aviation system to the so-called Category 1 status.

?We may be unable to use these new planes on our flights to the United States, and the cost advantage offered by the aircraft may only be realized by implementing our alternative plan for the deployment of the aircraft,? Bautista told PAL shareholders in late September.

Translation: If Uncle Sam continues the squeeze, PAL will deploy the 777 to the Middle East market.

Money-go-round

? GMA 7 has indefinitely suspended the editor of its Web site, Jose Torres, after he was ousted as chairman of the leftist National Union of Journalists of the Philippines over what may be diplomatically termed as personal fund-raising issues.

GMA 7 has, in the meantime, named Abe Cerojano as officer-in-charge of the department.

? Shimizu, one of the top five contractors of Japan, has agreed to take in as apprentices in its Singapore office select engineering and architect graduates of De la Salle University-Dasmari?as.

Shimizu will shoulder the airfare, board and lodging of the chosen student-trainees for their 350-hour practicum in Singapore, according to La Salle Dasmari?as vice chancellor Myrna Ramos.

Heard through the grapevine

Real estate taipan Andrew Tan has quietly worked out another deal with the Manila City Hall that allows Tan?s mass-market Empire East subsidiary to build a residential condo complex on a city-owned property right beside the short-lived Jai Alai fronton in Harrison Plaza.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)