Jornal do Brasil ceases paper edition, becomes 100 percent digital

[rabs]

Jornal do Brasil is one of the most important newspapers (along with O Estado de Sao Paulo, O Globo, and others) today (Sept. 1); it became the first totally digital newspaper in Brazil.

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snips

--RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Starting September 1, 2010, Jornal do Brasil, celebrating its 119th year, will become the first 100% digital newspaper in the country.

The decision, the product of a responsible analysis of the future of print media throughout the world, also resulted from a daily survey that JB conducted through newspaper ads and the website jb.com.br.

Similar to prestigious communication outlets throughout the world, Jornal do Brasil is updating the way it interacts with readers, promoting environmentally sustainable practices and continuously making improvements in line with the latest technologies.

This helps ensure that its hundred-year old brand and quality content remain available for present and future generations of readers. Thus, JB continues its pioneering path, having in 1995 become the first Brazilian newspaper on the Internet.
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In today's world, the economic and environmental costs of paper are unsustainable and unnecessary.

For every day that a newspaper such as JB is not printed on paper, 72 trees are kept from being cut down. Given the greater or lesser number of sections during the week, in a year's time more than 30,000 trees are saved.

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Just one Sunday issue uses up 200 trees that take years to grow and occupy 40,000 square meters of forest. This equals four and a half soccer fields. Using the digital method for a period of one year can save more than 1,200 Maracana-size stadiums of forest.

For a JB issue to be printed on paper, an average of 10,000 liters of water and 40 Mw/hour of energy per day are used. Nature takes six weeks to decompose just one copy of the newspaper printed on paper.

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More

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jornal-do-brasil-becomes-first-100-digital-newspaper-in-brazil-101596443.html

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Lula da Silva praises Jornal do Brasil

Starting today, JB begins a new phase of daring. It becomes the first of the traditional Brazilian dailies to renounce printed newspaper distribution. It will continue being published digitally, with news accessible on the Internet through paid subscription. It represents a new business plan, focused on a new era of technology and knowledge.

As a pioneer in territory that is still uncharted for Brazilian press, Jornal do Brasil will have a great challenge ahead: finding a format that balances ease-of-use and the portability of the new digital media with the organization and hierarchical order of information and events to be shared by the public in their social relations. A format that can benefit from a lower production cost while at the same time being capable of maintaining and exceeding the level of quality and credibility of the competing newspapers.

Print journalism is going through a time of serious uncertainty around the whole world. Academics are watching this experiment closely, as are owners and journalists of innumerable traditional publications in Brazil and abroad. I sincerely hope that Jornal do Brasil is able to find its path and emerge as a world-class publication with great influence on the formation of Brazilian public opinion.

Brazil needs good newspapers. It does not matter if they are printed or on electronic platforms. What is paramount is that they are of good quality and are committed to providing their readers with good information and discussing good ideas.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/president-lula-salutes-boldness-of-jornal-do-brasils-100-digital-edition-101935033.html

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Once again, Brazilians lead the pack not only in Latin America but around the world in attempting a solution to the dying print newspaper industry.

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Another story from MercoPress (English)

http://en.mercopress.com/2010/09/01/one-of-brazil-s-media-icons-becomes-first-100-digital-newspaper

[Peace Patriot]

1. I don't know about this.

You know what my first thought was? How will the poor get the news? If all news becomes channeled through electronic media, and if corpo-fascist conglomerates succeed at their efforts to control electronic media--as they have pretty much done with TV/radio--for instance, with dropping net neutrality--then you have a situation in which only those who can AFFORD computer technology have access to the news, you have alternative news in that forum marginalized and you have a dead printing industry, which means that the poor would have trouble accessing both corpo-fascist news sources and alternative sources. There is also the danger--not so outlandish as it seems--of a mass failure of electronics and satellite networks.

Disclosure: I am an old-fashioned reader who likes the feel of a book in my hands. But I am not a Luddite. I think the internet has been extraordinarily liberating and informative.

I suspect that the use of paper for printing books and newspapers is a small drop-in-the-bucket of deforestation, and that bureaucratic/military forms and reports, toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, wood chipping for fiberboard, product packaging, paper grocery bags, throw-away fast food packaging, advertising mailers/catalogs and hundreds of other uses of tree fiber have far, far more cumulative impact than books and newspapers. And NONE OF THEM are vital to free speech. Books and newspapers ARE. Is this trend toward electronic information a way for multinational corporations to LIMIT information, literacy and free speech, while blathering about the environment?

Would the trade-off in LIMITS to who can access information and who can CREATE information be worth it, if all information goes electronic?

Is what we have seen of multinational corporate control of the public airwaves--TV/radio--harbinger for what will occur when all access to information and creation of information are electronic?

As with electronic voting--now entirely corporatized/privatized here (and to a worrisome degree in Brazil!)--the public has not had time to ABSORB, CONSIDER and DISCUSS all the potential consequences of such a transformation, and to CREATE public good laws and regulations to mitigate negative consequences. Electronic voting was rammed through here in the space of two years (2002-2004). It is almost completely non-transparent, and now, in the U.S.--with the ES&S buyout of Diebold--largely controlled (80%) by ONE, far rightwing-connected corporation. Will we see impenetrable monopolies on access to information and information creation, with the elimination of paper books, newspapers and magazines? The electronic voting monopolies are not a good omen.

Electronic media, especially the internet, have amazing potential to knit the world together--to reach into the poorest households in urban barrios/ghettoes and remote rural areas--to inform, to educate, to expose local and larger-scale corruption, to reach across borders on critical issues, to provide tools for organizing and development, and many other common goods. But then so did TV. And look what a controlled swamp of corpo-fascist propaganda that has become!

I really don't feel enthusiastic about the loss of a print newspaper. I feel WORRIED.