Columnist
Ocampo started writing for Weekend Magazine of the Philippines Daily Express in 1985 and joined the staff soon after. His column, "Looking Back", first appeared in the Philippine Daily Globe in 1987 and he compiled the material from these columns into two bestselling books: Looking Back and Rizal Without the Overcoat. In 1990, the Philippine Daily Inquirer took on Ocampo and his column. In December 1996, to commemorate the centennial of Jose Rizal, Ocampo and the Inquirer published a series of front-page articles about Rizal which won the first LRP Award for Journalism. The series was later integrated into an expanded edition of Rizal Without the Overcoat. When Ocampo was appointed chair of the National Historical Institute and later elected chair of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared she was an ardent reader of Ocampo's newspaper column, admiring his writings because he "makes history so approachable."
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