An outsider's look at insider's karen davila

If there was one thing broadcast journalist Karen Davila didn’t want to compromise when she was looking for a place to buy, it was location, location, location (okay, so that’s one word three times). She can walk to work if she wants to but she doesn’t (her husband does, every weekday). When she hired her driver, he must have thanked his stars for a breeze job since the distance between her house and place of work is so negligible a full tank of gas probably lasts them weeks.

You can skip stones in her bathroom and they’d end up at her desk in the ABS-CBN compound in Quezon City, where she anchors the late night news program Insider, among other shows. And it probably takes longer to walk up the stairs to her apartment floor than to walk to work.

Karen and husband DJ Sta. Ana live next door to the ABS-CBN compound – literally just across the street. Their home is in a cluster of medium-rise buildings with wraparound windows and small terraces, right in the heart of Quezon City’s star-studded piece of real estate.

It’s a moderately-sized unit that Karen has decorated with light, functional pieces – what she calls "non-serious furniture, the Ikea type" – to give it a more spacious look. The things that aren’t used every day, such as old toys and clothes and books, are put in boxes and shipped to their families’ homes in Makati and Bicutan. Her dream house of an airy bungalow with a sprawling front garden and furnished with minimal furniture – maybe Balinese or Mediterranean or any of those "happy-looking home" styles – will come in the future. Maybe when they build more flyovers or the traffic in Quezon City miraculously disappears.

It’s a variable cost, choosing to live near their place of work. For the moment, it’s all worth it because Karen and DJ – Karen especially, since her work hours are fragmented – can afford to steal moments with their son David, to play with him in the middle of the day, have dinner with him at 6 p.m., put him to bed, and still make it to the 11 p.m. newscast.

David is two years old. He has brown hair and dark, big eyes and a friendly smile. He doesn’t cower in the presence of strangers or shyly hides behind his yaya. While I’m waiting for his mother, he approaches me and takes the pen from my hand and begins writing (or what passes for a two-year-old’s scribble anyway) on my notebook. Then he laughs and runs away with the pen with the explicit intention of decorating the white walls with his drawings except that his yaya catches him in time.

Later, while Karen and I are talking at the dining table, David would surreptitiously approach the electric fan on the floor and a piece of paper gets caught in the blades, a sound every mother must find terrifying.

Karen screams, "Sweeeeetheart! Mommy told you not to touch the fan!"

David runs beside the sofa when Karen releases him from a bear hug and looks at us, trying to decide whether he’s going to start bawling or go on amusing himself.

Karen whispers, "Ganyan ang mga bata, napagalitan kasi."

Sensing no attention is forthcoming, David ignores us and continues to play.

Karen’s 10-year career in television may be characterized as a series of chasing news stories nonstop and along the way she’s come to believe that a woman can have it all: a great career and family life.

"Now the most important thing for me is being a good mother, but it doesn’t mean I don’t focus on my work. I want to be able to show them that when you balance your time and you’re serious, you are both a mother and a journalist every hour and every minute of the day.

"But it’s wrong to say everything is as important or as fulfilling. Or that your career will be as successful as those who don’t have families. Maria Shriver said it best when she said, ‘It’s not true that you can have it all in the sense that my career will be as good as those who are single. One has to give.’"

You can almost hear the unspoken words: When the road bends, one must slow down even when you’re in the fast lane.

You get the feeling that Karen Davila is a very practical person. She doesn’t like expensive jewelry (she likes bead accessories), she doesn’t go on "P300,000 shopping sprees like the lot of them" (she’ll buy Gucci shoes but her limit is two pairs), she can be ready to go on TV in 16 minutes (10 for a bath, six to apply makeup), she shops at Ikea, Bo Concept, Our Home (and not those über luxury brands that break the bank).

Plus, she’s "not the type that can stay in a parlor for three to four hours." She insists that "what people see on TV doesn’t even tell the story of who I really am. I don’t want to be a frivolous person. It’s not me, I want to keep life to a minimum. Given the profession that I have, if I can put everything else down to basics, I will, but without compromising my public image."

Her design inclination leans towards that direction, too. She likes light and simple furniture instead of heavy ones. The only exceptions one will find in her house are a low chair and table from northern Philippines – everything else appears to float.

The most interesting piece in the house is the large painting fronting the door, a Chatti Coronel given by Karen’s childhood friend Kim Atienza. The painting represents a woman coming into her own, in full bloom. But really, it’s a woman’s private part, which seriously looks like a Venus flytrap. Karen laughs when she relates that everybody who comes to her house has an opinion of the painting. They either love it or hate it. They either get it or they don’t.

"Since we live in a two-bedroom condo, I’m very conscious that we don’t have a lot of space," she says. "We furnished it as a young couple would."

The dining table with matching chairs from Bo Concept is round so it doesn’t take a lot of space, the bookcase is light and movable, the blue sofa against the wall is the same one they had when they were living in a one-bedroom unit in the same compound, before David was born. It’s a sofa bed that colleagues use when their editing stretches overnight.

Having a young child also influences her style. The living room used to have an abaca rug, which Karen had to get rid of after David got rashes. The coffee table, meanwhile, doubles as a chest for his toys.

"I think with kids, what’s important is that the stuff you buy, like the walker, etc., shouldn’t be the bulky ones because they’re more expensive and you won’t have the space for them. Our style is smaller and functional pieces.

"We chose to have a lifestyle that’s convenient. DJ has a house in Makati, tapos maiipit ka naman sa traffic instead of spending time with your family. Dito, when I’m needed at work, I’m there. Then I go home right away to spend time with my son. When he’s bored, I take him to the radio show."

Which might explain why, when there’s a breaking news at 3 in the morning, such as the Oakwood mutiny, Karen is the first anchor to go on air.

When Karen was in high school at Colegio de San Agustin, she designed prom dresses for her classmates. After getting her BA Communication major in Broadcasting degree at UP, she applied for a fashion scholarship at Parsons School of Design in New York. "Sobra akong fan ni Donna Karan. Super idol ko siya. Siyempre na-reject ako, iyak ako nang iyak. Naisip ko wala nang mangyayari sa buhay ko! But God’s plans are always good for us."

Karen then applied for a guest relations job at Shangri-La Hotel and at an advertising agency, both of which turned her down. "I guess I was really destined for TV," she says now, reflecting on her beginnings at GMA-7 as a reporter for Business Today and the late Louie Beltran’s Brigada Siyete. Her role model in broadcasting is Cheche Lazaro. "Very few will ever reach that caliber. Kahit maging kalahati lang ako ng isang Cheche, matutuwa na ako doon."

It was in Channel 7 where she met DJ Sta. Ana, who was then a Malacañang reporter. Two years later, he became the desk manager and they started dating. When Karen transferred to ABS in September 2000, DJ stayed for a few months more at GMA. "The news business is very competitive. Even if you don’t say anything or talk about what happens in the office, they will always assume that you had something to do with information going to the competition. Mabuti rin na lumipat siya," she says, then adds, "DJ is so quiet, he’s so confidential as a person."

The couple got married in 2001, in very private ceremonies (only 20 relatives and friends were there) at the Hong Kong Peninsula Hotel.

Now that DJ is the news director for operations at ABS-CBN and with her present work (she anchors Insider on weekdays at 11 p.m. with Cito Beltran; she reports, produces and writes for The Correspondents; and has a daily radio show called Pasada 630 with Vic Lima), she admits that she sees her future in writing (the laborious, less-glamorous part of the TV job) and perhaps a TV magazine show "that would reflect how feels on social issues. I want to give time to marginalized sectors that don’t really get airtime, that don’t get the Kris-Joey attention. Advocacy journalism, I’ve always been into that. That’s why I like the radio show Pasada 630, where I am able to show the listeners how I feel about certain issues."

Karen’s future looks bright and that may be because her present is clear. "In the end, I want to contribute something to television. Pretty faces come and go, and young people come and come and come. If you get to the heart of television, you’ll be able to find more meaning in your work."