Pope John Paul I died during the night of Sept. 28, 1978, a Thursday, but his death was only discovered Friday morning, about 4:30 a.m., Rome time. In Brazil, it was earlier.
At that time, nearly all Brazilian newspapers began printing after midnight. The presses were already rolling when the news arrived in Brazil, by telex. Journalist Henrique Caban, who was then the managing editor at the Rio daily “O Globo,” remembers that he was awakened by his secretary in the middle of the night, about 2 a.m., to request authorization to stop the press run and change the headline.
Something similar happened in newsrooms at all the major newspapers. Folha began to print its Sept. 29 edition with a headline about the location of a nuclear power plant. “Angra (dos Reis) is earthquake prone.” In the early morning hours, it changed the headline: “Pope John Paul I dies.”
In the 26-year period that separated the deaths of John Paul I and John Paul II there has been a revolution at newspapers. Telex, typewriters, paper archives, printing after midnight, all these things have been tossed aside without even a memory in newsrooms.
Hits and misses
Have newspapers improved in this quarter century? There is no doubt. They have more technological resources, companies are better structured and, in general, they offer a well-made product.
The death of John Paul I was a big surprise. Nobody expected such a short pontificate, only 33 days. On the day of the announcement, Friday, Folha substituted a headline with news from international news agencies and limited coverage to the front page, with a photograph.
On Saturday, it came out with a five-page edition and an editorial. It also published stories sent by its correspondents in Rome, Pedro del Picchia, and in New York, Paulo Francis. There was a biographical page bylined by Gerardo Mello Mouro, an analysis from UPI and a piece by Newton Carlos about the election of a new pope. On Sunday, the newspaper came out with four pages on the topic.
Folha’s edition last Sunday had 14 pages. The only thing in common with the 1978 edition was Gerardo Mello Mouro’s byline.
Newspapers today benefit from a nearly infinite volume of information available about any topic and instantaneous communication. The pope’s worsening illness in recent years gave everyone plenty of time to calmly plan and produce the edition about his death. For this reason, they offer more historic and analytical pieces. Still, they erred.
Folha reported on Tuesday that the pope had left a will. And on Wednesday, it did not publish the entire controversial interview in which Cardinal Dom Eusbio Scheid of Rio said that among other things, President Incio Lula da Silva is not a Catholic, but is “chaotic.”
On the positive side, the newspaper had dispatches from Clvis Rossi in Rome that were informative and well written; supporting material by an expert, Professor Daniel Farah, which did not enter into the innocuous, nationalistic rooting for the election of (So Paulo Archbishop) Dom Cludio Hummes (as pope); and on Friday, was the only one among the big newspapers to question the interpretation, apparently mistaken, that in the pope’s will he considered resigning.
Old newspaper
There was, however, a serious problem in this coverage. Despite the fact that the death occurred on a Saturday afternoon (4:37 p.m. in Braslia), thousands of readers received their Sunday newspapers without the news.
In 1978, newspapers had infinitely fewer resources than are at their disposal today. But they delivered newspapers with hot news. The advances that new technology has afforded them has not resulted in more time to produce them, but the contrary. Newspapers close their editions increasingly earlier.
There are logistical and business reasons for this. The operation of distribution today is more complex, and newspapers print many more copies and have more pages than they did 26 years ago.
But none of this comforts Folha readers who live in Salvador, Recife or in Porto Alegre who don’t find information in their Sunday newspaper that they had already seen on TV, read on web sites and heard on radio.
In the case of Folha, the Sunday newspaper is sent by airplane to other parts of the country such as the North, Northeast and southern state of Rio Grande do Sul and is distributed to 24-hour newsstands in So Paulo. The presses start running at 2 p.m., even when facing the pope’s imminent death. Less than three hours later, the headline “Pope knows he is dying, cardinal says,” was outdated. At “Globo” the same thing happened. It began printing at 11:30 a.m. with the headline “Pope’s condition is irreversible.” And “O Estado de So Paulo” had “Pope loses consciousness; heart resists.”
When the death was announced, Folha stopped printing, produced a new newspaper and reprinted 37,000 copies to cover some cities that receive the first edition. Still, 13,419 newspapers with the old headline were distributed. If we compare it with Sunday’s entire press run, 425,000 copies, this is only 3%. But for readers who received the old news, that is no consolation.
Why do newspapers need to close so early on Saturday? According to the companies, to guarantee that they are delivered early on Sunday (distribution is more complicated on weekends than weekdays due to lack of flights) and to get some of the press run on newsstands by Saturday afternoon, mainly for those who want to see the classifieds early. The premature closing on Sunday is an invention from the United States imported in the 1980s.
The problem of old news also affects readers in So Paulo. Gilberto Pelinson Ximenes complained about scores in the sports section on the Sunday the pope died. The section carried a list of 49 soccer games played on Saturday. None of them had results, only an advisory: “(Game) not finished by the closing of this edition.” In the time of John Paul I, this did not happen.
REFLECTION
“Tell stories well”
Journalist Clvis Rossi worked at the weekly news magazine “Isto” in 1978, when Pope John Paul I died. He had 15 years in the profession, having already been managing editor at “O Estado de So Paulo” and began to accumulate international experience, with the military coup in Chile (1973) and “Carnation Revolution” (1974) in Portugal.
Rossi has been in Rome since April 1 and has written the main stories that Folha has published about the death of John Paul II, since April 2.
I asked him for his reflection about what has changed in Brazilian journalism in these 26 years that separated the announcement of the two deaths.
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“The big difference between journalism that reported the election of Karol Wojtyla and the announcement of his death is the fact that the print media lost its main identity: precisely the characteristic of being the one that “announced” the event.
Losing what was the DNA of journalists since Guttenberg caused the disorientation that we all feel these days in newsrooms. And, I suspect, it is one of the big factors in the formidable hemorrhaging of readers suffered by the print media (worldwide because the disorientation is global).
The drama is simple to explain: we remain prisoners of the dictatorship of “it happened yesterday,” when now the Internet and TV have the day before what we will have many hours later.
In the case of the pope’s death, who feels betrayed by newspapers whose headlines were: “The pope died?” One hundred and ten percent of readers already know “what happened yesterday” some 12 hours before the newspapers began to circulate.
I pointed out a problem, but don’t ask me for a solution. I don’t have one. I’m afraid that my blabbering — and I make a point of emphasizing that it is blabbering — is more of a problem than a solution. But I bet on journalism that:
1 — Recovers the quality of stories. In the end, it is the only characteristic that differentiates newspapers from TV (and, in a certain way, also the Internet, which is more bothersome and therefore less valuable in a story). We must do a good job of telling stories well, taking readers by the hand to where things happen, with its colors, flavors and odors.
2 — Assembling puzzles. Before, our function was to collect the pieces of puzzles and offer them to readers. Today the pieces are available in other media. Our competence lies in putting them all together in a form that makes sense to readers.
3 — Offer opinions about the shape that the puzzle will take.”
Translation by John Wright
