The Economist destaca mídia sem reação à  internet no Brasil

do Brasil 247

à‰ grave a crise da mídia impressa no Brasil. E ela está retratada na edição deste fim de semana da revista inglesa The Economist !“ a mesma que tem sido citada com frequência, pela imprensa tradicional, em razão das críticas contumazes à  política econômica no Brasil.

De acordo com o diagnóstico da publicação britânica, os meios de comunicação tradicionais no Brasil não têm conseguido se adaptar à  revolução causada pela internet. Segundo a Economist, metade dos lares no Brasil já têm conexões à  web e o leitor brasileiro prefere consumir a informação online. Outro fator destacado pela revista é o fato de o Brasil já ser a segunda base mais importante para o Facebook no mundo, tendo superado recentemente a àndia !“ o que prova que o leitor também “curte” compartilhar as informações.

Este aspecto torna ainda mais grave a crise do setor, uma vez que os jornais tradicionais estão progressivamente fechando o seu conteúdo !“ o que é incompatível com a lógica de compartilhamento da rede. Na reportagem, a Economist ressalta as demissões em grupos tradicionais, como Abril, Folha e Estado de S. Paulo. Só na cidade de São Paulo, 270 cortes foram anunciados e outros estão a caminho.

Foram também ouvidos dois editores de veículos tradicionais, que não apontaram nenhuma saída. Jayme Sirotsky, do grupo Zero Hora e ex-presidente da Associação Nacional de Jornais, disse que o setor está “no meio de uma tempestade”. Ricardo Gandour, editor do Estado de S. Paulo, mostrou estar perdido, afirmando que a fragmentação da informação !“ ou seja, a sua democratização !“ pode ser prejudicial à  democracia.

A reportagem também destacou que a publicidade online, que hoje representa 14% do total, tende a crescer ainda mais nos próximos anos, tomando espaço do montante gasto em jornais e revistas.

Abaixo, a reportagem em inglês da Economist:

Publishing in Brazil

Folding papers

As the middle class embraces online media, newspapers are struggling

Jul 13th 2013 | RIO DE JANEIRO |From the print edition

IN ITS offices on the Tietê river, Editora Abril, a sprawling publishing empire, displays its 53 glossy titles across the wall like a winning hand of cards. But the hand is about to shrink. Roberto Civita, Abril”s boss, died in May, catching the family-run firm off guard. Already facing declining revenues, last month Abril announced it would fire a handful of senior editors and merge its ten publishing divisions into five. Analysts speculate that at least ten loss-making magazines and as many as 1,000 editorial jobs may be axed in the next few months. The building is trembling,! says one marketing executive.

Abril is not alone. In June the Folha de São Paulo, the country”s largest daily, sacked 24 staff, 6% of the total. Its rival, O Estado de São Paulo, has been hit, too. After the death in May of its director, Ruy Mesquita, the paper cut 50 jobs. Its sister paper, the Jornal da Tarde, which stood up to the military dictatorship that ran from 1964-85, folded last year. The crisis is reckoned to have claimed 280 jobs in São Paulo alone this year. We”re in the middle of a storm,! says Jayme Sirotsky, a former president of the World Association of Newspapers. Everyone is trying to produce quality news content and still stay profitable in a hostile environment.!

These are familiar woes. Demographic upheaval, economic downturn and technology are ravaging publishers in Brazil as they are in the rich world. As 40m Brazilians left poverty in the past decade, publishers banked on a fresh wave of print subscribers. In the end, the new middle class went online instead: nearly half of all homes now have an internet connection.
Newspapers have scrambled to put their content on the web. Yet many readers prefer scouring social media to browsing the digital versions of conventional papers and magazines. Last year Brazil overtook India to become the world”s second-largest user of Facebook, after the United States. Advertisers have taken note. Instead of flogging their brands on news websites, they are pouring money into Facebook and Google. Once negligible, digital publicity now represents 14% of total ad spending and is growing fast, according to the Brazilian chapter of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an industry body.

To complicate matters, web-based news is scattered among portals, blogs and aggregator sites that cannibalise conventional news sources. And fidelity is history. Online, people consume news the way they snack, sampling this and that from many dishes,! says Marcelo Lobianco, chief executive of the IAB. Journalists say (unsurprisingly) that quality has suffered. You have to worry that the extreme fragmentation of communications cannot be healthy for democracy,! says Ricardo Gandour, editor of O Estado de São Paulo.

In part, publishers papered themselves into a digital corner. When online media emerged, newsprint was king and magazines and newspapers simply dumped their content on the web and sold advertising for a song. Banners were cheap and news publishers practically gave away ad space on their websites,! says Luiz Nogueira, head of Simples, a digital-media company. Persuading advertisers to pay more has proved difficult.

Tellingly, the street protests that swept Brazil last month were organised online, as they were in Egypt and Turkey. News media, at first slow to pick up the story, often became targets of the protesters. We are seen as the establishment,! says Mr Sirotsky. Even so, it seems the young radicals are not yet ready to give up on old media: when asked how they found out what was happening, six out of ten protesters said they turned to news sources such as Folha, TV Globo and O Estado.