The sports section does not adequately cover news from other states outside So Paulo and the rest of the state, which together have 520f Folha’s readers
Atltico Mineiro is the new champion of Series B in the Brazilian soccer championship and next year returns to the first division. With one of the biggest followings in Brazil, the team, among more than 100 competing in the three divisions of the Brazilian championship, has brought the most fans to the stadiums, with 29,500 per game.
None of this had any importance to Folha. The news that it has returned to the soccer elite for 2007 was a small note in the sports section on Nov. 12. And winning the championship in the penultimate round was a slightly bigger item, but with a headline that did not do it justice, “Paulista wins by nine and still shines as elite.” The main information was written in code in the subhead: “Series B Round consecrates Atltico-MG and Nutico.”
It is clear that the coverage frustrated Folha readers in the state of Minas Gerais, where the newspaper sells well. Letters to the Editor published two letters, one complaining about the newspaper and the other believing that Atltico has already exaggerated its celebrations. I got various letters from unhappy Atltico fans. They resuscitated the old criticisms about the newspaper’s sports coverage: “It comes as no surprise that I noticed that Folha is the biggest home team booster among Brazilian newspapers,” protested Rodrigo Moura Soares. “It’s sad because this newspaper, which is sold throughout Brazil, shows total disrespect toward Atltico fans. Is it a prejudice?” asked Cludio Camilo de Sousa. “I want to register my disappointment,” wrote Jos Luiz Saldanha da Fonseca. All three are from Belo Horizonte (the capital of Minas Gerais, where Atltico plays).
These are the complaints by fans. But the problem is not only that fans in Minas Gerais are unhappy. Over the past four months I received 186 messages about the sports page – 133 of them were complaints and criticism. The most common ones are: the section only pays attention to soccer, to the detriment of other sports; in soccer it is a hometown booster: it only pays attention to three teams from the city of So Paulo (So Paulo, Corinthians and Palmeiras) that are in the first division. “Folha seems to be a ‘municipal’ newspaper said Antonio Augusto de Souza Lima of So Paulo: “Of what was covered at the Brazilian Championship, 900f the news was about the Big Three.” Jlio Csar Sandrin Moreno of Campinas (So Paulo state) complained that the newspaper “practically ignored” the B and C series in the Brazilian championship, the FPF Cup and the second division in So Paulo state.
I don’t know if Folha is the biggest booster among newspapers. Boosterism is a characteristic of sports coverage at almost all newspapers and is justified for market reasons. The Rio daily “O Globo” pays more attention to teams in Rio, and the newspapers in Salvador do the same with teams in Bahia state. The challenge is to cover local teams well without lack of attention to important journalistic events that occur, such as Atltico’s victory.
It is a bigger challenger for Folha, which should pay special attention to the interests of the public in So Paulo, where it is based, but it can’t lose sight that the newspaper itself is considered “a newspaper at the service of Brazil.” The biggest part of its circulation (52%) is outside the So Paulo metropolitan area: the rest of the state is responsible for 310f sales, and other states 21%.
Readers, however, complain, and for good reason. A survey of the news archives found that in 2006 through the end of October, 11,855 stories were published in the sports section (not included are graphics and special World Cup sections). Soccer is responsible for 64.50f the news (I repeat, excluding World Cup coverage), followed by auto racing (4.8%) and basketball (3.4%). The teams most covered were Corinthians (12.5%), So Paulo (11.7%) and Palmeiras (9.5%). After those, at a distance, were Santos, Internacional, So Caetano, Real Madrid, Flamengo and Juventus.
There are two aspects that call attention to Folha’s sports pages: 1 – The newspaper has less space than its competitors. Folha published, between Nov. 15 and the day before yesterday, the equivalent of 39.1 pages of sports news, against 47.4 in “O Estado de So Paulo” and 41.1 in “O Globo,” 2 – The team of specialized journalists is concentrated in So Paulo. The newspaper does not have any journalist exclusively for sports outside of its headquarters.
It is obvious that these two factors (space and personnel) weight heavily on what I just wrote, the reason for dissatisfaction for so many readers who have easy access to information on the Internet, radio, TV and sports magazines.
OTHER SIDE
“Increase our lobby”
I asked the sports editor, Jos Henrique Mariante, to comment about reader complaints. These are his words:
“My nephew is 15 and rides horses. He complains that Folha does not give the results. ‘We do,’ I respond. ‘But not the name of the third-place finishers,’ he shoots back. ‘Third?’ For him, the news is third place. In his mind, sports, on that Monday, we should devote the whole front page to that rider. Soccer, Formula One racing, and everything else does not interest him. In the end, sports is horseback riding. ‘And the rest?’ I ask. ‘The rest is your problem.’
“Last Sunday, for Atltico fans who read Folha, the possibility that So Paulo might be the champion of Series A was leftovers. Leftovers? Yes, for those who are interested only in Series B. That way, how do you explain, for those who await a full-page picture, that the edition they receive in the interior of Minas Gerais is finished before the game began? Or for those who received the edition including the game, that budget and paper restrictions allow only a modest report about the victory?
“The ombudsman has already written quite a bit about the crisis that has afflicted newspapers. I say that it is like never before in sports sections, expensive by their nature – in theory, we have to be where the sports are played, and every day there are games almost everyplace. Worse, we need newsprint, something else that is expensive, to tell about all this.
“Sports, however, is one of the smaller sections at Folha, similar to the situation at ‘Globo’ and ‘Estado.’ Investments have shrunk at all of them, so that none of the three, for example, sent journalists to cover the most recent game the national team played in Switzerland.
“But what about Atltico? I will do like the sports editor at ‘The New York Times,’ who, facing similar demands, responded to a reader: ‘Increase our lobby. Pose this question to the newspaper.’”
Focus on corruption
Folha and other newspapers were correct to look into the focus of their journalistic investigations in this post-electoral period, evaluating candidates and parties.
Election campaigns are one of the traditional sources of corruption and illicit enrichment. A study of efforts to watch candidates allows a mapping of the lobbies that act in legislative bodies and government palaces.
Despite restrictions by the electoral tribunals created to make campaigns less expensive after the revelations by Roberto Jefferson, the first surveys show that the fundraising already declared is much bigger than in 2002, which proves what we already knew: elections were always driven by resources without origins that can be proved and with loans from unreliable accounts.
The press showed that the candidates involved in the scandals of 2005 and 2006 had millionaire campaigns; the newspaper “Valor” listed the members of Congress elected with the help of big companies, which form true super-party delegations (mining giant Vale do Rio Doce and its subsidiaries helped elect 46 members of Congress); Folha mapped delegations of entrepreneurs, steel mills, banks and oil companies.
Newspapers should insist on these surveys and suggestions for new measures that make the electoral process more transparent and allow more control by society over parties and politicians.
Translation by John Wright
