Rio Gringa

Q & A with Sérgio Charlab

If you follow Brazil and you're on Twitter, you likely know Sérgio Charlab, a Brazilian journalist who does an incredible job of aggregating news about Brazil in English. He's incredibly agile at sharing and condensing both breaking news headlines and the best enterprise stories.

Now, he's testing out a new distribution service on Whatsapp - the first Brazilian broadcast news service on the chat app. He sends top stories throughout the day, as well as the front pages of the major Brazilian newspapers each morning. Each headline comes with an image and authors' Twitter handles, making it easy to reshare on Twitter.

Charlab is a veteran Brazilian digital journalist. Three decades ago, he used HTML, a novelty back then, to get Jornal do Brasil online, making it the first Brazilian newspaper on the web. During that time, Online Journalism Review named him as one of the "50 International Names to Know" in digital news. He's had a long career in newspapers and magazines, as well as publishing two books. He's always liked to combine his passion for journalism and technology.

Via email, I asked Charlab about his work on Twitter and Whatsapp to understand his strategy.

How long have you been doing the @scharlab Twitter, and why did you start it?

I started sharing Brazil related news regularly in 2012. It was the visible part of my attempt to understand and partially automate all human judgements related to finding, reading, evaluating and sharing news.

Why did you decide to start the Whatsapp service?

Since the 1990s, (now defunct) Pointcast there have been countless services with the ambition to define "The Future of Online Publishing." Twitter may have been the one that came closest to the way this elusive future is shaped in my mind. Unfortunately, that still unreachable goal alone can't sustain Twitter investors' eagerness to get value for their money in this competitive field.

As Twitter expands its focus of attention, it loses part of that journalistic appeal and dilutes its heft as a tool to share news. At the same time, 'one to one' services like Snapchat or Facebook's WhatsApp not only now grow faster than Twitter, but also have been adding "one to many" tools. That allows one person/organization to directly distribute content to many. I was waiting for this effervescent moment, and as soon as WhatsApp also launched a web version I knew it was time to start playing more seriously with it.

Courtesy of Sérgio Charlab.

How do you divide your time between WhatsApp and Twitter? How do you decide what goes on which platform?

To feed Twitter, I've developed a plethora of tools/ways to find news content to aggregate. Those who follow the Twitter handle know that, if I wish, hardly a piece of content or tidbit data on Brazil escapes me. What many don't know, is that I also developed a capacity to gather this content very quickly after it gets published online originally.

I read or parse all data, instead of just resharing as is very common online. Once I get content suitable to aggregate, I schedule it for the next appropriate time spot on Twitter—but share it immediately for the WhatsApp subscribers. They get it first and can even reshare themselves from WhatsApp to Twitter, even before the time I do it myself.

I have plenty of data from almost 50,000 tweets sharing news to understand how Twitter works best for most news consumer users. It may be surprisingly counterintuitive. I'm now doing the same with WhatsApp. I start with preconceptions which I expect to test, adapting the daily feed to the discoveries made by usage. For instance, at least for now, WhatsApp users instantly get the most "powerful" news, tidbits. These will be in much lower numbers than a regular day of posts on Twitter. Of course, WhatsApp users can always block the broadcast or silence the notifications for a while. The free WhatsApp subscription is harmless.

Do you think messenger services like Whatsapp will ultimately be more useful than Twitter for news delivery? Why or why not?

There's a shining moment for everything. Email is obviously suitable for the same "one to many" news distribution I'm doing through WhatsApp. But it has long lost its mojo. Twitter's mojo is entirely based on its enviable base of news sources and celebrities. But you already see Twitter somewhat desperately trying to keep both groups at bay—a difficult task in the exciting new apps/services launching times in which we live.

Through WhatsApp (or also Facebook’s Messenger or any new similar service) you are directly in touch with your subscribers, who of course have enough confidence in what you do to allow you to reach them in their personal mobile space. This is no small matter. Because of that, I'm very committed to maintaining the privacy of personal information of the WhatsApp readership.

Subscribers are protected by anonymity in regard to other subscribers. Only I know they're receiving the news broadcast. And differently than a WhatsApp group, in the WhatsApp broadcast if you reply to any post it won't be addressed to the group of subscribers—only to me. This kind of exchange can quickly evolve to a deeper level of personalization that would allow both service producer and subscriber to control the flow to the news consumer’s individual needs.

Ultimately, I want to give news lovers the flow of information I had dreamt for myself. Curated by great editorial minds that go through everything in detail to find and share, directly to me, what I need and what I would love to know, in the timing and frequency I appreciate best and in a format I can easily and quickly share with others.

Follow Charlab on Twitter at @scharlab and get on his Whatsapp list by emailing scharlab at gmail dot com.

Rio's Olympics Legacy: What Can't Be Fixed Overnight

Ever since I started writing about Rio de Janeiro, this is one of the most common questions I'd get from prospective visitors and expats: "Is Rio a war zone?"

My immediate answer is no, but the real answer is more complicated.

Rio is not a war zone in the sense of Syria or Yemen. And like other major cities in the Americas, much of the violent crime affects the poorest residents. Tourists aren't going to see tanks rolling down the street in Ipanema, and the typical foreign visitor is unlikely to see an exchange of gunfire.

But it's undeniable that armed conflicts in the city's favelas and suburbs between police, drug traffickers, and militias that developed over decades aren't going away.

April protest in Complexo do Alemão. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

 

Stray Bullets and Police Killings

That's become clear in the last few weeks, as five people were killed in 24 hours in one of the city's largest favelas, Complexo do Alemão. The community had suffered through three months straight of shoot-outs every day.

One of the victims was a mother shot by a stray bullet in her own home; her teenage daughter was also injured. Another case was that of a 10-year-old boy shot in the head by a policeman. His parents, who say police also threatened them, packed up and left Rio, returning to their home state of Piauí.

In Brazil, police kill an average of 6 people a day.

Plus, stray bullet injuries and killings, once a scourge during the 1990s, are ticking up again this year. It's literally a laundry list.

Last week, a 16-year-old girl biking in the West Zone neighborhood of Jacarépagua was killed by a stray bullet, caught in the crossfire between rival drug gangs.

In March, a 63-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet in Del Castilho, and a 10-year-old flying a kite in the North Zone neighborhood of Engenho da Rainha was seriously injured by a stray bullet.

In  February, a girl was shot in the leg on a main street in Copacabana, and three days later, a three-year-old was shot in the spine by a stray bullet in the North Zone.

The Complexo do Alemão killing of the 10-year-old boy, Eduardo Ferreira, shook the city. A military policeman admitted he likely fired the fatal shots, and had a nervous breakdown. Rio's governor later confirmed this "mistake" the police made.

It's another sign that the state's pacification strategy remains to make long-term gains. The governor confessed that he doesn't expect peace in Alemão for at least 10 to 15 years, and that pacification is a "permanent process."

Deaths of children at the hands of police is nothing new in Rio. Between 2003 and 2012, 60 percent of Brazilian police murders of children took place in Rio state. Prior to 2011, forensics weren't even required in cases of killings by police, until the Juan case happened.

Never-ending Turf Battles

In 1999, the documentary Noticías de uma guerra particular, which is sometimes translated as News from a Private War or News from a Personal War, was released. It's an essential watch to understand the dynamics and history of Rio's armed conflict. This is a deeply entrenched conflict, and a government security presence is not enough to resolve it.

 

Over a decade later, the pacification strategy has yet to find a way to permanently rid the city of organized crime groups, including drug traffickers and militias. Some just get displaced to other areas, or new players pop up.

This is not a band-aid fix that can happen in a year, even if violence is temporarily on hold during the Olympics.

The Good News

Community media, including Voz da Comunidade, Coletivo Papo Reto, Fala Roça, and others are making it impossible to ignore what's happening in the city's favelas. Through live coverage on social media, eyewitness videos and photos, and daily reports from the ground, the government can't hide abuses and is under greater pressure to address community struggles with violence.

Protests following Eduardo's death were covered around the world, and put pressure on the government to sit down with Alemão residents.

Alemão protest this month. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

Rio's "Olympic legacy" is unlikely to include a permanent security fix. And if you attend the games, you're not likely to have to face this kind of violence. But those who call Rio home will.