Philippine Daily Inquirer

As the successor to the previous Mr. & Ms. Special Edition and the weekly Philippine Inquirer, it was founded on a budget of ₱1 million and enjoyed a daily circulation of 30,000 in its early days. The new daily was housed in the dilapidated one-story Star Building at 13th and Railroad streets in Port Area, Manila. It was put out by 40 editors, reporters, correspondents, photographers and other editorial employees working in a 100-square-meter newsroom. Columnist Louie Beltran was named its editor-in-chief.

The newspaper was instrumental in documenting the campaign of Corazon Aquino during the 1986 presidential elections and, in turn, the 1986 People Power Revolution. Its slogan, Balanced News, Fearless Views, was incorporated to the newspaper in January 1986 after a slogan-making contest held during the first month of the Inquirer's existence.[4] In this period, the newspaper reached a high circulation of 500,000 copies a day.

In July 1986, questions about finances and a divergence of priorities caused a rift among the founders that led Belmonte, Soliven, and Art Borjal's split from the Inquirer to establish The Philippine Star.[5] As Belmonte owned the Star Building where the Inquirer was headquartered, the newspaper amicably transferred to the Soliven-owned BF Condominium on Aduana Street, Intramuros.[5]

In February 1987, Federico D. Pascual, former assistant managing editor of the Daily Express, was named executive editor of the Inquirer and was appointed editor-in-chief two years later.[4] It was during his term in 1990 that the Inquirer took the lead from the Manila Bulletin to become the Philippines' newspaper with the highest circulation.

However, in July 1990, the Inquirer headquarters in Intramuros was damaged by the 1990 Luzon earthquake. On January 5, 1991, the newspaper transferred to the YIC building along United Nations Avenue and Romualdez Street in Malate.

PDI logo prior to the 2016 relaunch

Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, the Inquirer's editor-in-chief from 1991 until her death in 2015

Inquirer's longest-serving and first woman editor-in-chief, the late Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc,[6] was appointed on June 14, 1991. She was a former columnist and editor of the Panorama Sunday magazine of Bulletin Today (now Manila Bulletin) who was sacked for writing articles poking fun at Marcos. She edited Mr & Ms Special Edition until the fall of the Marcos regime. She was also the first editor-in-chief of Sunday Inquirer Magazine.[7]

Under her term, on January 12, 1995, the Inquirer moved to its current headquarters in Makati after transferring headquarters four times.

President Joseph Estrada accused the Inquirer of "bias, malice, and fabrication" against him, charges that the newspaper denied. In 1999, several government organizations, pro-Estrada businesses, and movie producers simultaneously pulled their advertisements from the Inquirer in a boycott that lasted for five months.[8] Malacañang Palace was widely implicated in the advertising boycott, which publisher Isagani Yambot denounced as an attack on the freedom of the press.[8]

In 2017, according to the survey conducted by AGB Nielsen, the Inquirer was the most widely read newspaper in the Philippines. The Manila Bulletin and The Philippine Star followed as the second and the third most widely read papers, respectively.[9] Magsanoc died on December 24, 2015, at St. Luke's Medical Center in Taguig.[7][10] A month after her death, Jimenez-Magsanoc was recognized as the Filipino of the Year 2015 by the Inquirer.

Philippine Daily Inquirer headquarters in Makati

On February 2, 2016, the Inquirer appointed its managing editor Jose Ma. Nolasco as the executive editor, the new top position of the newspaper, replacing the traditional editor-in-chief position used by the Inquirer for more than three decades.[11]