Beyond the business prospects, an editorial effort to increase circulation would be recommended, even at a higher cost
Actor Tio D’vila occasionally wants “to know what happens in So Paulo theaters.” A resident of Rio de Janeiro and Folha reader, he is not able to do so. When he visits his mother in Rio Claro, So Paulo state, he buys the newspaper and, again, does not find the listings.
The “Folha Guide,” a successful schedule that circulates on Friday with cultural and leisure programming for the city of So Paulo, is not distributed in the rest of the country. Nor does it even a good part of So Paulo state, where there is no lack of people who make plans for the weekend in the state capital.
“Folha Magazine” on Sunday reaches fewer regions: contrary to the “Guide,” it is not circulated along the So Paulo state coastline. The “Style,” “Places,” “+ Money” and “Living” magazines are distributed in the Federal District and Rio de Janeiro, places that do not get the “Guide” and “Magazine.”
Readers in Rio, for their part, are not informed on the front page about the four magazines which, together, total 13 editions per year. The motive is that the national edition is also destined to places that don’t see the inserts.
Readers of the six magazines are in the state capital, So Paulo metropolitan area, including the ABCD industrial suburbs and some adjacent municipalities. This area corresponds to about 500f *Folha*’s circulation. A portion of the remaining readers have access only to some magazines, and a big contingent (nearly all of the states and the interior of So Paulo state) gets none.
There are two types of readers: those who enjoy the fruits of *Folha*’s work and those who lose the supplements that focus on service journalism and deal with behavior. There is a palliative in the national edition (destined for readers far from the state capital), with excerpts of stories from the magazine, but the problems are constant.
Reader Maria Celina lvares Corra called attention to last Sunday. The front page carried a teaser for a story that chefs “gave recipes that they learned” from their mothers. Inside, in the daily news section, there were no recipes. They only came out in the magazine.
On Sunday, March 18, the front page showed four guides to “the first steps to change your life.” Readers outside the state capital and So Paulo metropolitan area found two. The teaser corresponded to the entire contents of a story in the “Folha Magazine,” of which the daily news section published only half.
I was upset and received a response through the managing editor’s office: “The definition of magazine circulation remains standard, which gives the products financial viability without extra cost for readers at newsstands and subscribers. As for the ‘Guide,’ it provides a service for residents of the capital, where it circulates.”
Folha, in fact, needs to consider the financial viability of the magazines. Meanwhile, beyond the business prospects, an editorial effort to increase circulation would be recommended, even at a higher cost. It is not good that the newspaper deprives some publications from half of its readers.
All the magazines are available at Folha Online (www.folha.com.br) for subscribers of Folha and Universe Online (UOL). Some have free contents (without restrictions). But Folha is a printed newspaper, and printed magazines should reach more readers.
“Traffickers” in photograph are movie actors
In Tuesday’s editions, the Rio daily “Jornal do Brasil” (JB) published on its front page a teaser with the headline “Traffickers show fire power on Orkut” (referring to the Brazilian equivalent of the MySpace web page).
On the top was a photograph of armed youths with the caption “Twelve traffickers with arms and bulletproof vests. Among them, a woman.”
The story on page 12 added more information obtained from the network of relationships on the Internet. “Another profile, by an unidentified person, showed a photograph that symbolizes the brazenness of the traffickers on Orkut. Twelve youths armed with rifles, automatic weapons and pistols posed for the camera on a hilltop. Even one woman appeared in the group.”
It was a scoop that turned out to be wrong, what *Folha*’s stylebook defines as “publication of a grave mistake in information.”
The “traffickers”were in reality actors photographed on the film that was far from unprecedented.
Unscrupulous people such as this are found in the history of every journalistic undertaking and every journalist. Those who never stumbled should dare to throw the first stone.
The biggest surprise, however, which JB saved for the next day, when the headline on the front page was “Actors become bandits on page that is apologist for Red Command criminal gang”: at some moment the newspaper recognized its mistake.
Reporting the police investigation into the virtual apologist for crime, the newspaper recounted that the “bandits” were artists, but transferred the blame: “neither the advisers to the group, Ns do Morro (We From the Hilltop), nor the actors would say who took the photograph and how it got there” (on Orkut).
JB’s biggest blunder was not a lack of checking into the photo put on the Internet, but to not assume that the information was incorrect.
I talked to the associate editor at JB, Ana Carvalho. She asserted: “We did not choose this photograph accidentally. We were influenced by the mistake because the photo was on four sites, all of them apologists for the Red Command. It is not too much to recognize, nor too much to recognize the mistake. I believe that there is unwillingness at ‘Jornal do Brasil,’ mainly by journalists.”
Ombudsmen meet at Harvard
Dozens of journalists from around the world will participate tomorrow through Wednesday in the conference “Ombudsmen in a Time of Transition.” The annual meeting of the Organization of News Ombudsmen will take place at Harvard University in the United States.
The meeting comes at a time of enormous transformation in journalism. The speakers – from the United States, United Kingdom, Russia and other countries – run from experts in ethics to bloggers. On Sunday I will tell about the meeting here in this column.
This week there will not be regular assistance, but readers who seek the ombudsman will have messages sent to the newsroom by my assistant Rosngela.
Translation by John Wright
