TAKEAWAY: Non-stop rain has almost paralyzed Sao Paulo, Brazil, that effervescent city of 18-million plus inhabitants—-and as many cars. We take a look at how newspapers cover the effects of the deadly storm that killed at least six
Photos tell the wet story in Brazil
Sao Paulo’s Jornal da Tarde: telling the story of a paralyzing rainstorm through photos. Questioning headlines: Isn’t this chaos, Mr. Mayor?
then on inside pages over photos, headlines read: “And this?” , or “And that?” or “And this, too?”
Front page of Diario De S. Paulo: an all photo front page, impact and boldness combined. Lead headline: So much rain it does not fit into one page
Even the business daily Diario do Comercio went for the big photos of rainy Sao Paulo. Lead headline: And summer never came!
Two of the largest circulation dailies: Folha de Sao Paulo and Estado de S. Paulo
Even regional newspapers like Zero Hora, published in Porto Alegre, south of the country, displayed the rain story on Page One
One newspaper that appeared not to be disturbed by the rain, the sports daily Lance, which offered its usual fare of sports headlines, big photos and a Brazilian color palette where yellow is king of the carnival
It was one of our most loyal readers, Alexandre Linhares Giesbrecht, of
Brazil, who brought the heavy rains of Sao Paulo to our attention.
In fact, Alexandre sent two pdfs of Sao Paulo’s Jornal da Tarde so we could see the unusual photographic treatment the newspaper had given the rain story.
I’ve been always a fan of Jornal da Tarde’s design from the 1970’s and 1980’s, which to me look amazing even today, and way better than the ho-hum design they use nowaays, which reminds me of any other paper in São Paulo. Today it’s front page was not especially attractive, even with a good headline (“Isn’t this chaos, Mr. Mayor?”), but the page 3A was a nice surprise when I opened the paper this morning, which followed with the pictures and a headline complement (“Isn’t this, too?”) followed by several subcomplements (“And this?”). They probably had too many good pictures and couldn’t find a way to put them all in front page — which they should have done, instead of adding other articles, the way they used to do 20, 30 years ago.
I agree with Alexandre: these pages of Jornal da Tarde, especially the inside all-photo treatment, allow to tell the story without the use of excessively long texts. This is a story that readers want to see through photos.
Alexandre has inspired us to look at how other Brazilian newspapers covered the rain storm.
TheMarioBlog post #435