For Caleb Maglaya Galaraga, journalism is not simply about reporting what happened. It is about understanding why it matters.
A Filipino writer who has spent the past several years building a career in journalism, Galaraga has developed a distinctive voice on the religion beat, where his reporting combines institutional knowledge, narrative storytelling and a careful attention to the people behind the headlines.
His stories move between the institutional and the deeply personal: bishops and church governance, congregations confronting crises, clergy and laity responding to social issues, immigration and faith, religious communities navigating political change, and the everyday lives of people whose beliefs shape how they understand the world.
At the center of his work is a simple journalistic instinct: listen closely, report fairly and find the human story.
That instinct has increasingly defined Galaraga’s work as a religion reporter for The Living Church, where he covers the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion across the United States. His reporting frequently requires him to translate complicated ecclesiastical structures and decisions for readers while preserving the voices of the people affected by them.
But Galaraga’s approach to storytelling was formed well before he became a religion reporter.
His professional background spans journalism, communications, strategic storytelling and government. Before earning a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, he worked in senior communications roles in the Philippines, where his writing was used in some of the country’s most consequential public-information efforts.
Harold Clavite, who served as director-general of the Philippine Information Agency from 2016 to 2018, supervised Galaraga during that period and later worked with him on communications projects in the United States and the Philippines.
Clavite describes Galaraga as a writer capable of moving between very different forms of communication—from speeches and editorial writing to books, strategic communications and public information.
“He is a professional of distinction,” Clavite wrote, citing Galaraga’s “remarkable abilities in the field of content writing, speechwriting, editorial writing, and book writing and development.”
What makes Clavite’s assessment particularly significant is the level of responsibility entrusted to Galaraga.
During his time at the Philippine Information Agency, Galaraga simultaneously held senior writer and senior communication specialist roles and his assignments were rarely routine.
One of his early tasks was to translate Clavite’s vision for a reimagined Philippine Information Agency into words, including the concept of “Ang Bagong PIA,” or “The New Philippine Information Agency.” He also drafted the script for an internal campaign intended to align the agency’s regional offices and staff around a new approach to digital communication and public information.
Then came crisis communications.
In October 2016, while Clavite was leading a presidential crisis communications team, he asked Galaraga to prepare talking points for the President of the Philippines. The material became part of an effort to address a public verbal controversy. Weeks later, Galaraga was asked to write an official statement for the chief of the Philippine National Police following an incident involving a protester outside the U.S. Embassy. According to Clavite, the statement was accepted, read at police headquarters and subsequently reported by major Philippine media outlets.
The work demanded more than good prose. It required judgment.
When former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was buried in November 2016 amid intense public controversy, Clavite recalled turning to Galaraga for immediate advice on messaging. Galaraga also provided discussion points that were sent to presidential officials accompanying the president at an international meeting in Peru.
That experience helps explain one of the qualities that distinguishes Galaraga’s journalism today: an ability to understand institutions from the inside while maintaining the perspective of a writer.
His government work also gave him experience reporting and communicating across subjects ranging from foreign policy and national security to public information, education and development. He participated in editorial coverage of the Philippines’ 2017 ASEAN chairmanship and provided leadership during major international meetings, including the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
Yet his professional identity has never been limited to government communications.
Galaraga has worked across journalism, nonprofit communications and public-interest storytelling. His experience has taught him how different audiences consume information—and, perhaps more importantly, how easily a complicated subject can be misunderstood when it is not communicated with precision.
Jeff Grant, an international fitness model and personality, saw that skill firsthand.
“Caleb’s strategic communication and content direction were foundational during the early stages of my digital presence,” Grant said, who has more than 200,000 followers across social media and whose image had graced dozens of fitness and lifestyle magazines in the United States and Europe.
“His input was instrumental in helping me refine my platform and engage my audience, ultimately enabling my content to reach nearly one million people on Facebook at its peak.”
Grant said Galaraga’s strength goes beyond producing content.
“His precision in messaging and deep understanding of brand narrative have consistently set his work apart,” he said.
That same attention to narrative now informs Galaraga’s journalism.
He has an ability to take subjects that might initially appear narrowly institutional and locate the broader questions within them: What does a church mean to the people who worship there? What happens when a religious community confronts displacement, disaster or political pressure? How does faith influence the way ordinary people respond to the world around them?
For Jana Tupas, an award-winning teacher and author, the Filipino writer’s particular strength is his ability to portray religious people with both specificity and fairness.
“As a communicator and writer, Mr. Galaraga possess a singular talent where he can portray the fullest story possible of every American who has a faith tradition,” Tupas said.
She pointed to the breadth of his reporting across religious traditions.
“His commitment to being fair and truthful to showcasing the life of faithful Christians across the United States – from Evangelical Christians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics – as well as Jews, make him and his talent not only needed, but extraordinarily necessary in a time when much understanding will be vital for people of faith in this country,” she said.
That ability to cross denominational and cultural boundaries is particularly important on the religion beat, where a journalist is often required to understand communities whose histories, vocabulary and internal debates may be unfamiliar to a general audience.
Galaraga’s writing is distinguished by that ability to translate without flattening.
He can explain an institution without reducing it to bureaucracy. He can write about a controversial issue without making controversy the entire story. And he can tell a deeply personal story without losing the reporting discipline necessary to make it credible.
His strongest work also demonstrates an instinct for memorable details and strong narrative openings. But style, for Galaraga, is never simply decoration. A well-crafted sentence has a purpose: to bring the reader closer to the people, facts and circumstances at the center of the story.
That balance between narrative and verification, empathy and distance, accessibility and complexity has become a defining feature of his journalism.
It is also a continuation of the work he was doing years earlier.
Clavite recalled that Galaraga eventually crafted the keynote presentation for the Philippines’ first National Information Convention, attended by more than 2,000 information officers. The speech included a line that distilled Clavite’s vision for public information: “A well-informed Filipino is an empowerd Filipino.”
The writing was concise. The idea was expansive.
That combination—saying something important in language people can understand—may ultimately be one of Galaraga’s greatest strengths as a journalist.
He has also taught writing. In 2018, he spoke to more than 200 school newspaper advisers on in-depth writing, with his presentation described as succinct and precise and used as a guide for developing journalistic analysis. He subsequently conducted writing and communications workshops for government information officers, educators and other communicators.
His former supervisor ultimately offered him the opportunity to become chief of staff, but Galaraga chose instead to remain focused on strategic communications and content development.
That decision says something about his professional identity.
For Galaraga, words are not merely an instrument for advancing an institution’s message. They are the work itself.
Today, that work is increasingly journalism.
His career has taken him from government communications to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and, ultimately, to the religion beat, where he is building a body of reporting that asks readers to look beyond institutions and headlines and see the people living inside them.
According to readers and some of his closest supporters, there is a literary quality to his writing, but it is anchored by reporting. There is empathy, but not sentimentality. There is moral seriousness but not moralizing. Most importantly, there is curiosity.
Galaraga wants to understand why people believe what they believe, how those beliefs shape their communities and what happens when faith encounters the pressures of public life.
In an era when religion is increasingly misunderstood, politicized and reduced to competing talking points, that kind of journalism has immense value and one that will be for the betterment of the American reading public.
