01/11/2009
A pair of shoes and a notebook
CARLOS EDUARDO LINS DA SILVA
ombudsman@uol.com.br
With exclusive stories about topics pertinent to the lives of readers, the newspaper showed how it can continue to be relevant
October was the month in which analysis of performance showed Folha offered the biggest number of examples of how the printed newspaper should continue to be relevant and useful to readers in the 21th Century a total of 18 times.
In eight front page headlines, it had exclusive stories about the topics of highest importance, the result of its own investigation, which obviously is costly.
On Oct. 8, the country learned that the government was holding back income tax refunds to improve its capital flows.
The intense outcry that resulted forced the Finance Ministry to recognize the fact six days later and said that it did not want to harm taxpayers, so it backtracked and released the total owed, with few exceptions, in 2009.
On Oct. 18, consumers learned that they have been paying higher energy rates than they owed for seven years. On Thursday, the companies acknowledged the possibility of refunds. In both cases, the immediate material interest of millions of Brazilians, not just readers of this newspaper, was in play and was saved, thanks to the practice of good journalism.
There's more: On Oct. 14, São Paulo residents learned that City Hall planned to increase property taxes up to 357% and wanted to try to mobilize to block the increase. On Oct. 19, it revealed that from 2003 to 2008 expenditures on public employees in São Paulo increased 19% over inflation to a total equal to expenditures by the Defense and Finance ministries.
Last Monday, the newspaper brought out two pieces of news that the federal government wants Congress to increase its control over mining activities in the nation. On Tuesday, it said spending on development in the Northeast was delayed by a lack of asphalt. And on Wednesday, it said the Legal Land program, which seeks to legalize land titles for millions of hectares of federal land in the Amazon, is being delayed by a boycott of ranchers and mayors and by dirty tricks.
All these topics are pertinent to the public agenda. By bringing them up, the newspaper provides a valuable public service, allows citizens to understand things they didn't know and organize to fight for what they believe is right and just.
That is the way, not by repeating news that the world already knows (Michael Jackson died, Air France plane crashed, Rio was chosen to host the Olympics), this newspaper can continue to be necessary every day for its readers and advantageous to the nation.
It's not easy, and it can be dangerous, as the movie indicated below shows (which is based on the true life of an Irish reporter), but in the end demands only what the great Anton Chekhov recommends in the book shown below for the production of good stories: a pair of good shoes and a notebook (or the current successors).
TAM TRAGEDY EXPLAINED BADLY
Folha's coverage of the conclusions by aeronautical authorities and federal police about the accident of TAM flight 3054, which killed 199 people on July 17, 2007, was not very good. The federal police report, which a competitor reported on Thursday, did not appear in this newspaper until Friday.
Brazil's Air Force did not even get the front page, and the material was modest, even though it dealt with the worst aviation event in this country's history, which moved and mobilized Brazilian society for months.
Still worse: on Wednesday, the report which dealt with subverting essential rules of journalism dedicated the headline and lead of the story to a "contributing factor" for the tragedy (the runway at Congonhas Airport) and relegated to second place the "decisive factor" (position of the lever), according to the conclusions.
Readers such as Antonio Azevedo suggested taking advantage of the opportunity to revisit the criticism in an opinion piece published July 19, 2007 with a teaser on the front page (headline "The right name for what happened in São Paulo is crime"). I think it's a good idea.
TO READ
"A Journey to Sakhalin," by Anton Chekhov, translated by Homero Freitas de Andrade, Martins Fontes Publishing, 2007 (starting at 25.11 reals, or U.S. $12.20)
TO SEE
"Veronica Guerin," by Joel Schumacher, 2003 (starting at 16.90 reals)
WHAT FOLHA DID RIGHT ...
FUTURE OF JOURNALISM
Great interview with the director of the Nieman Foundation's Journalism Lab at Harvard on Tuesday
FOREIGN ETHANOL
On Wednesday, it recovered from the delay in the news in reporting on the sale of an ethanol plant, the newspaper publishes good material with a wide vision about the topic
... AND WHERE IT DID BADLY
TENANT LAW
Since May, when it was introduced in the Chamber of Deputies, readers did not get any information about the Tenant Law until its final approval at the end of Thursday
Translation by John Wright
