Miguel Belmonte era
In 1998, the Board of Directors unanimously appointed Miguel Belmonte as president and CEO, while Soliven remained as chairman of the board of directors and publisher. The following year, the newspaper introduced "Hotline 2000", which made use of SMS as a means for opinion polling, thus becoming a pioneer in televoting in the Philippine print media industry. It was the beginning of other digital endeavors that brought the newspaper to the Digital Age. In 2000, the newspaper debuted its website, philstar.com, thus becoming one of the first newspapers in the Philippines to have a presence in the Internet (the website itself would later launched its own editorial team and began publishing news articles independently since 2009). In the same year, the company began using computer-to-plate printing system. In that year too, Miguel's brother, Isaac Belmonte, was appointed editor-in-chief of the newspaper.
To further expand its readership, The Philippine Star entered into a partnership with fast food restaurant Jollibee in 2003 to become the first newspaper to be distributed free of charge in a fast food restaurant. A complimentary copy of the newspaper was given to Jollibee patrons nationwide for every purchase of a Jollibee breakfast meal.
On August 24, 2004, The Philippine Star acquired Cebu City-based English-language newspaper (which is also the longest running newspaper in the city) The Freeman and its sister publication, the Cebuano-language tabloid Banat as part of its strategy to strengthen its presence and influence in the Visayas-Mindanao region. The Freeman is the longest-running broadsheet newspaper in Cebu City, established on May 10, 1919, while Banat was first published on August 23, 1994. Both newspapers are owned by the influential Gullas political family.[7][8][9]
The newspaper lost its founding publisher after Soliven died in Tokyo, Japan on November 24, 2006. Isaac Belmonte eventually replaced him as publisher and chairman of the editorial board in 2012. Former executive editor Ana Marie "Amy" Pamintuan serves as current editor-in-chief after replacing Isaac Belmonte in 2012.
Philstar.com began as an online repository of The Philippine Star. In addition to this, however, the website has begun producing its own content and has a separate editorial team. While Philstar Daily Inc. operates the newspaper and social media platforms as well as niche websites, the website is operated by Philstar Global Corp.[10]
