The Philippine STAR

The Philippine Star, self-styled as “The Philippine STAR,” is the flagship English-language newspaper of the Philstar Media Group. It was first published on July 28, 1986, seven months after the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. It was founded by veteran journalists Betty Go-Belmonte, Max Soliven, and Art Borjal who were involved in the “Mosquito Press,” a collective name for the different publications critical of the Marcos dictatorship.

With the sudden death of the Belmonte matriarch in 1994, Soliven assumed chairmanship of the Board of Directors while retaining his position as publisher. He then appointed Belmonte’s son Miguel as the executive vice president. On August 4, 1995, The Philippine STAR became the first Philippine broadsheet newspaper to publish a colored front page.

In 1998, the Board of Directors unanimously appointed Miguel Belmonte as its president and CEO, while Soliven remained chairman of the board of directors and publisher. The following year, the newspaper introduced "Hotline 2000", which made use of SMS for opinion polling that pioneered televoting in the Philippine print media industry. In 2000, the newspaper launched its website, philstar.com, and became one of the first newspapers in the country to have a presence on the Internet. In the same year, the company began using a computer-to-plate printing system.

To further expand its readership, in 2003 The Philippine Star entered a partnership with Jollibee, one of the largest fast food companies in the country, to give out free copies of its newspaper for every purchase of a Jollibee breakfast meal.

On August 24, 2004, The Philippine Star acquired the Cebu City-based English-language newspaper The Freeman and its sister publication, the Cebuano-language tabloid Banat to strengthen its presence and influence in the Visayas-Mindanao region. Both newspapers are partially owned by the influential Gullas political family of Cebu.

In early 2009, businessman and PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan expressed his interest in acquiring a stake in The Philippine Star. The following year, MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., the media conglomerate of PLDT chaired by Pangilinan, acquired a 20-percent stake in the newspaper, as well as an 18-percent stake in its rival Philippine Daily Inquirer. In March 2014, MediaQuest finally took control of The Philippine Star after it acquired a majority stake of 51 percent in the newspaper.

Today, Hastings Holdings, Inc., one of the holding companies that Pangilinan created using money from the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund, owns 50% of the newspaper. The Belmonte family retained a 20-percent stake, as well as management and editorial control.

In 2012, six years after the death of its founding publisher Max Soliven, Isaac Belmonte assumed the position of publisher and chairman of the editorial board. Former executive editor Ana Marie Pamintuan replaced Isaac Belmonte as the editor-in-chief of The Philippine Star.

Based on Nielsen’s Philippine Landscape Report, which measures consumer and media views in the country, The Philippine STAR has a national news readership rate of 3.03 percent from April to June 2023, ranking 3rd among broadsheets.