{"id":17501,"date":"2014-09-01T16:58:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T19:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=17501"},"modified":"2018-08-17T09:08:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T12:08:05","slug":"community-media-profile-jornal-o-cidadao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=17501","title":{"rendered":"Community Media Profile: Mar\u00e9’s ‘O Cidad\u00e3o’ Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Check out\u00a0the\u00a0complete\u00a0series of community media profiles here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Saturday August 23, staff from Jornal O Cidad\u00e3o<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(‘The Citizen’ Newspaper) distributed copies of the newspaper across the sixteen favelas that form Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a> in Rio’s North Zone. They handed out some copies directly to people they met on the street and in stores, while stuffing other copies under doors where nobody was home.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy distributing the newspaper from house to house\u2026we can get immediate feedback on the content,\u201d explained Gizele Martins, the newspaper\u2019s managing editor and resident of Mar\u00e9. \u201cWe get a sense of whether the residents like the articles, don\u2019t like the articles, have criticisms, don\u2019t have criticisms\u2026 if they have questions, if they have complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> staff read articles directly to community members who cannot read. Community schools also receive copies so that teachers can incorporate them into class assignments. The paper, which comes out every three or four months, is always distributed for free.<\/p>\n

O Cidad\u00e3o\u2019s<\/em> interactive distribution model differs significantly from that of most other newspapers, but then the community newspaper as a whole functions differently from other media platforms. It intentionally seeks to fill the gaps in external sources\u2019 coverage of and interaction with Mar\u00e9. Mainstream media journalists bring the \u201cstereotypes and preconceptions\u201d that still pervade Rio society, Martins argues, before continuing: \u201cI believe the role of community media is to break this.\u201d Furthermore, she suggests, community media are simply better at covering issues related to favelas. The people who live in Mar\u00e9 are best situated to tell the stories of Mar\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Founding questions of local identity<\/h3>\n

When it was founded in 2000, as a project of the local NGO Centro de Estudos e A\u00e7\u00f5es Solid\u00e1rias da Mar\u00e9 (CEASM)<\/a>, O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s main focus was on exploring and creating a local identity across Mar\u00e9\u2019s sixteen favelas. It sought answers to questions such as \u2018What is a favela?\u2019 \u2018What is the favela in Mar\u00e9?\u2019 and \u2018What is the Mar\u00e9 identity?\u2019 The newspaper invented the term Mareense <\/em>to describe someone or something from Mar\u00e9\u00a0in an effort to create a shared sense of membership in the community. To answer their founding questions, the newspaper focused on everyday local culture, detailing the history of a bakery or telling a local fisherman\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The project isn’t\u00a0easy to maintain. Journalists are all volunteers. Some are not only responsible for reporting and writing, but also for editing, administrative tasks, and O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s community journalism course. Some of the current ten staff members hold other jobs simultaneously. While the majority are residents of Mar\u00e9, some contributors come from other favelas in Rio and even the greater metropolitan region. Travel costs add up even for local staff members, as they need to pay for buses to cover happenings all across the expansive territory of Mar\u00e9, while basic supplies such as official paper and pens can strain the newspaper\u2019s finances. The team is fortunate to maintain a good working relationship with CEASM, which provides a one-room office in its Mar\u00e9 headquarters and covers lighting, Internet and telephone costs.<\/p>\n

Training new community journalists<\/h3>\n

Since 2012, one of its most exciting projects–the community journalism course<\/a>\u2013has served to renew O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s team with trained and passionate people. The 2014 course will start in September and will last about three months. Courses covering a range of media, from written reports to video and radio, are taught by O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> staff and previous years\u2019 students, such that a sustainable cycle of students becoming teachers drives the course forward each year.<\/p>\n

The importance of training people in a variety of media is clear from the variety of platforms O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> employs. Since\u00a0many Mareenses<\/em>\u00a0do not have a computer or phone with Internet access, the printed newspaper remains the newspaper\u2019s core format for reaching local residents. However, O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s blog<\/a>, Facebook page<\/a> and Twitter feed<\/a>\u00a0grow their audience beyond the physical boundaries of the favela. The website publishes stories much more regularly than the printed paper, reporting on events as they happen. Martins believes the majority of people reading O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s website are young people from outside of Mar\u00e9, while young people from within the favela complex engage through the printed newspapers distributed in schools and the Facebook page.<\/p>\n

Human rights focus<\/h3>\n

Around 2010 the newspaper began shifting its focus towards human rights<\/a> issues. Following a number of fatal shootings in Mar\u00e9<\/a>, the team \u201cfelt the importance of shifting topics,” explains Martins. “The killings\u00a0and violence were a result of the fact that the government did not see the community\u2019s physical spaces or residents as a legitimate part of the city. They only saw us as being on the margins of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> staff noticed that other newspapers suggested young victims of shootings were involved in drug trafficking<\/a>, in cases where community members knew that to be false.<\/p>\n

While mainstream news at times reported on the deaths, they failed to ask the questions that were so pressing to the residents of Mar\u00e9: \u201cWhy is there so much war in Mar\u00e9? Why do we deserve this life?\u201d From the O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> team\u2019s perspective, residents are portrayed as violent, when they are actually governed by violence; they are portrayed as criminal, when they are actually criminalized. So stark were the discrepancies between the mainstream and local perspectives of favelas that Martins describes\u00a0O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>\u2019s shift towards human rights as a \u201cnecessity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, in the wake of the World Cup<\/a> and as Rio prepares to host the 2016 Olympics<\/a>, O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> is still focused on deliberately asking the questions other media outlets\u00a0gloss over. Martins points out that many Brazilian and international journalists reported on forced evictions<\/a>\u00a0and police occupations<\/a> taking place in the lead-up to the mega-events, but they still failed to ask the deeper questions that favela residents are desperate to understand: \u201cA newspaper reports that a favela will be occupied because of the World Cup. But nobody is speaking about why the favela will be occupied because of the World Cup\u2026 nobody is questioning why the people of Mar\u00e9 deserve so much war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategy going forward in the build-up to the Olympics, then, is to continue pushing these questions into as many spaces as possible. O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em> staff plan\u00a0to not only use their own print newspaper, website and social media platforms, but also put forward articles for mainstream media and\u00a0engage in debates, interviews and street protests, making use of all available channels. In this way, their community media\u00a0outlet\u00a0serves as a reliable source of information from within the favela, whilst\u00a0actively engaging people outside of the favela too.<\/p>\n

For more information visit\u00a0O Cidad\u00e3o<\/em>‘s website<\/a> and blog<\/a> or follow on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Check out\u00a0the\u00a0complete\u00a0Series of community media profiles here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Check out\u00a0the\u00a0complete\u00a0series of community media profiles here. On Saturday August 23, staff from Jornal O Cidad\u00e3o\u00a0(‘The Citizen’ Newspaper) distributed copies of the newspaper across the sixteen favelas that form Complexo da […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":17506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1294,1288,1290,1284,329,1329],"tags":[24,977,771,364,280,125,11,25,1399,1117,1259,37,638,2634,1498,30],"writer":[1352],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-interviews-profiles","11":"category-solutions","12":"category-by-international-observers","13":"tag-alternative-media","14":"tag-citizen-journalism","15":"tag-community-pride","16":"tag-community-based-organization-cbo","17":"tag-complexo-da-mare","18":"tag-drug-traffic","19":"tag-forced-evictions","20":"tag-human-rights","21":"tag-jornal-o-cidadao","22":"tag-journalism","23":"tag-mega-events","24":"tag-north-zone","25":"tag-police-occupation","26":"tag-series","27":"tag-series-community-media-profiles","28":"tag-urban-violence","29":"writer-cerianne-robertson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=17501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}