Broadcast journalist Karen Davila has been chosen to receive the Glory Award this year. Handout

Veteran TV showrunner Deo Endrinal has been chosen to receive the Glory Award this year. Handout

Broadcast journalist Karen Davila and veteran TV showrunner Deo Endrinal lead this year's recipients of the Glory Awards.

This year’s honorees, selected by a jury of their peers, also include Dr. Rey de la Cruz (special education), Dr. Monina Movido-Escalada (development communication), Lutgardo Labad (arts and culture advocacy), and Criselda Yabes (literary journalism).

The Glory Awards, handed out annually by the UP College of Mass Communication Alumni Association (UPCMCAA), honor alumni whose work goes beyond “the usual” consistent track record of excellence.

”Excellence in craft becomes only meaningful when it inspires others and drives them to excellence,” explained broadcast news veteran and Glory juror Jose “Jing” Magsaysay.

Besides Magsaysay, the other jurors were UPCMC dean and film professor Dr. Arminda Santiago; UPCMC communication research department chairperson Dr. Julienne Thesa Baldo-Cubelo; PR expert and former UP vice president for public affairs Tessa Jazmines; writer-director and 2019 Glory awardee Floy Quintos; film and TV director, writer and educator Jose Javier Reyes; and 2018 Glory awardee Luz Rimban, executive director of the Asian Center for Journalism at Ateneo de Manila University.

Alumni association president Malou Choa Fagar announced that due to the continuing public health crisis, the Glory awards presentation scheduled on November 14 will take place in a virtual environment.

The Glory Awards were inspired by the legacy of honor and excellence of Dr. Gloria Feliciano, the founding dean of UP mass communication programs, who served from 1965 to 1985.

THE 2020 AWARDEES

Karen Davila

Broadcast journalist Davila is a veteran news anchor and correspondent of ABS-CBN.

Her long-running daily show “Headstart” on ANC puts newsmakers on the proverbial hot seat to illuminate current and controversial issues.

Davila began her career as a writer-presenter of documentaries for the Probe Team and was part of the ABS-CBN investigative journalism series the Correspondents.

She also moderated presidential debates and the televised sessions of the World Economic Forum-East Asia Summit.

She bagged international prizes for her in-depth reporting about children and street drugs, children in jail, and the Marcopper Mining environmental disaster.

Davila also won the TOYM (The Outstanding Young Men) and TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service) awards and was the Rotary Club of Manila’s Journalist of the Year in 2004.

Deo Endrinal

As head of ABS-CBN’s content production unit Dreamscape Entertainment, Endrinal is one of television’s top “showrunners” who has overall creative authority and management responsibility for TV programs.

He started as a writer and producer for GMA Network (“Martin After Dark” and “Lunch Date”), TV5 (“Pops”) and ABS-CBN, his home network for the past 3 decades.

Some of the most successful ABS-CBN programs from the 1990s up to the present bear his imprint — from “Showbiz Lingo”, “The Buzz”, “Today With Kris”, “Game Ka Na Ba?”, “Mula Sa Puso”, “ASAP” and recent hits “May Bukas Pa”, “Tayong Dalawa”, “Walang Hanggan” and “Ang Probinsyano”.

Since 2018, Endrinal has been producing movies for the digital platform iWant such as “Glorious”, “Bagman”, “Call Me Tita”, and the recent “Love Lockdown”.

The denial of ABS-CBN’s franchise pushed the network to find a new home on Youtube and Facebook, where Endrinal helped Kapamilya Online Live garner millions of subscribers in record time and continues to develop new content.

Dr. Rey de la Cruz

Author and special education expert De la Cruz is a Palanca award-winning playwright, pioneering alternative filmmaker, gender-equality advocate, and developer of innovative teaching strategies.

His research showing the effects of creative drama on social and oral-language skills of children with learning disabilities was featured at conferences on education and published in peer-reviewed journals.

Drawing from his versatile range of disciplines, De la Cruz originated and disseminated the classroom use of the ancient Philippine board game sungka in teaching social and math skills, for which he received a diversity award from the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children-Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners.

Dr. Monina Movido-Escalada

Escalada is an internationally acclaimed development communicator and a professor emeritus at the Visayas State University in Baybay, Leyte.

She rose from a research assistant to assistant professor of broadcast communication in UP Diliman in the 1970s.

In the past 3 decades, her research pursued a deeper and better understanding of farmers’ management and decision-making practices.

The findings enabled her to develop learning strategies that include entertainment-education approaches using radio soap operas, for example.

Escalada has been honored by the World Bank, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the UN Environmental Program, and the governments of Vietnam and Japan for her agricultural innovations.

Lutgardo Labad

Labad has been recognized nationally and internationally as a theater artist, teacher, cultural worker, and arts and heritage promoter.

He was instrumental in developing the creative arts and theater curriculum of the Philippine Educational Theater Association.

As PETA’s pedagogy and artistic director for 25 years, he conducted workshops for disadvantaged provincial communities, the urban poor, and the indigenous peoples of Mindanao.

Labad is most well-known as a musical scorer who won 9 awards for his work in classic films such as “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang” (1974), “Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?” (1976) “Pakawalan Mo Ako” (1982), “Bilangin Ang Mga Bituin sa Langit” (1990), “Magnifico” (2004), and “Naglalayag” (2004).

After deciding to settle in his home province of Bohol in 1994, Gardy organized community theater groups across the Visayas to make them integral components of sustainable development thrusts, especially in ecological and cultural tourism.

Criselda Yabes

Yabes is a veteran freelance journalist and award-winning author of 10 books. Her latest book, “The Battle of Marawi” (Pawikan Press, 2020), “is a rarity, a work that combines top-notch journalism and gripping literature,” in the words of Glory Awards juror Floy Quintos.

Yabes began her journalism career reporting on the restored democracy, restive military, and raging insurgencies of the 1980s.

That period inspired her first book, “The Boys from the Barracks: The Philippine Military after EDSA”, in which she traces the history of dissent within the military through intimate portraits of the soldiers who took part in several uprisings.

Yabes remarkably won the highest laurels in two different categories of the UP Centennial Literary Prize (2008) — one for her creative non-fiction book, “Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom” and another for a book under fiction, “Below the Crying Mountain.”