Resilience of what is proper to reporting

The process of digital transformation has been imposed on newsrooms with more force since the start of the pandemic. Managers face business changes alongside the challenge of reporting a unique political and health period.

Platformization as a business strategy, replacing the old pipeline, had been implemented, albeit under other names, since the creation of the news sites of newspapers and broadcasters. Publishers understood fairly quickly that popular digital networks, from a business standpoint, behaved like parasites, and that it would not be possible to distribute from them. In addition, the advertising budget changed its table, to the detriment of traditional publications. This led to a significant change in the way content is offered.

When Covid-19 arrived, in early 2020, the variables of doing journalism swung violently. From then on, besides the need to take the audience to subscriber status, there was a call for resilience in the things proper to reporting. Maxims along the lines of “a reporter’s place is in the street,” which had been losing strength, fell completely. The challenge is to keep the business going, to deliver coverage with periodicity, continuity and look consistent with the broadcaster’s standards, with practically everything done from journalists’ home offices.

In an interview with Orbis Media Review, the news director of the RPC group, in Paraná, Luciana Marangoni, says that “it is certainly the most challenging coverage in journalism since the invention of television.” The rich discussion of editors with reporters among the company’s cubicles no longer happens. Indeed, the facilities are isolated and the teams divided by colors, with physical contact restricted to the essential of the essential, with shift changes marked by sanitizing surfaces and equipment.

Family newsroom

In digital life, many-ended coexistence contracts are established or, more recently, “coexistence fields” are discussed. The idea involves the permeability of relationships. “We have already told very sensitive stories, such as the collapse of a building in Guaratuba, or the landslides and floods in Antonina and Morretes. But Covid-19 has to do with our families, with risks to everyone’s health,” notes Luciana. Before, the journalist’s trade could well stay from the front door outward, but not now.

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper and the portal Bem Paraná, Josianne Ritz, misses the newsroom’s hubbub. “I am well adapted. What was bad at the beginning is not anymore. I feel safe. And so I did not set up a special space, to keep the hubbub atmosphere. I stay in the living room, with everyone.”

At the outlets edited by Josianne, output has increased since the isolation measures, a result that is also, for her, a consequence of the professionals’ time with the company. “I feared that the print closing, because of layout, could get complicated [because of online work]. But we are closing even earlier. The rapport is a bit atypical, because we have worked together for a long time. Most [have been here] for more than 20 years,” she records.

Life’s issues did not cease to exist

G1 Paraná was the first extension of the TV Globo portal in an affiliate. In February, it turned ten, with more than one billion pageviews. Executive editor Bibiana Dionísio, who has been there since the first day of operation, set up an office in her living room. “I understood that life goes on, that one must take care of food, exercise, the mind. This is the world’s reality now, and what can I do? Take care of my family, work, of course, but I enrolled in a communication and marketing course at USP, to learn new things.”

According to Bibiana, the need for news grew on the occasion of the plague, but also because G1 gained relevance and prominence. “Every day we do the exercise of choosing priorities. Is this story better than that one? When we decide on topics that stray from tragedy, we get a good audience response. It is a way of contributing to other aspects of people’s lives.”

When the pandemic began, Bibiana’s baby, Luísa, was one year and three months old. “Strength comes sparsely. There are weeks in which it is possible to maintain a satisfactory rhythm, in which things move more lightly. But there are also moments of physical and emotional exhaustion.” Luísa requires a list of specialized follow-ups, such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy, “and this is lived together with work, with the issues of family, of life, which did not cease to exist.”

In a year of extreme measures, there was not a single infection originating from RPC’s headquarters.

Far from simple or easy, resilience in the practice of journalism during the pandemic became a form of survival.