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Us by Us: through union, community newspapers still find their call in Rio favelas

To be a journalist and live and work inside a Rio favela is to walk a fine line between the idiosyncrasies of its daily coverage in contrast with the expectation people inside - and outside- its boundaries brew. All pressure-cooked in the core of a mostly still underdeveloped urban area that compresses 22% of the city's population and many of the city's most pressing issues regarding sanitation, security, political representation and education.

"Even residents are still not used to seeing journalists that live and work in the Favela. So it took a while for them to understand I was one. They always tend to imagine someone from known outlets", analyses Michel Silva, journalist, editor and also just another Silva among other 100 thousand people that live in Rio's biggest favela alongside millions of small - and big - problems derived from its disorganized, organic growing.

"Sometimes they bring local problems that have no news value at that moment, so I act as an mobilizer to try to tame it with local authorities", notes Michel, explaining this is one of the ways the residents actively or reactively help developing possible new scoops, in a constant dialogue with the community.

Manager and editor of the almost a decade old newspaper in Rocinha called Fala Roça (Speak Rocinha in a literal translation), the 27 year old reporter compares this sometimes tiring way residents act with the how some outside colleagues do. "In many cases they use us just to ask for help without considering that we are also journalists. And many don't know how to differentiate a punctual help from actual production assistance. And after their story is published I am still at Rocinha and they get to go home".

The fact that the traditional media also tends historically to focus their stories on armed conflicts between police and drug dealers, police brutality and general misery porn doesn't help as well.

"They [journalists] know that, depending on the zip code, favelados might be portrayed in the traditional media either as an entrepreneur or as a drug dealer", says Claudia Santiago, a professor at Núcleo Piratininga de Comunicação (NPC) that taught many of the current community focused journalists, remembering an infamous news cover about never proven drug trafficker swimming pools.

Michel himself even quantified this issue, analysing 92 daily covers by Rio biggest newspapers. He discovered only four positive cover stories, while negative stories occupied 80 covers.

Theresa Williamson, founding executive director of a NGO that publishes RioOnWatch, a hyperlocal-to-global watchdog news site and favela news service, articulates that a society that understands its past might not be reached without balancing its news coverage and listening to people in theses places. "Favelas have achievements as well as challenges ahead".

This horizon, strenghtened by cientific articles, is one of the reasons that Michel and many other journalists that live and work in Rio's favelas work by the "nós por nós" (Us by Us in a colloquial translation) mantra, creating by themselves and for themselves media initiatives in order to speak their own voice to their own people. Those that traditional media - and the State- usually forgets.

"I grew up reading newspaper that my dad, a janitor, brought home from work", recalls Michel, pointing to that, and his curiosity, to initially understanding the structure of a news article. Fala Roça was created with this in mind by him, his sister and others in 2013. According to Michel, if they hadn't done it, somebody else would have.

Community newspapers, in this ecosystem, provide an interesting glimpse of how, even in the age of social media and transitions from print to digital, the press can connect locally in a tangible and important fashion.

"After the rise of the internet, a thesis emerged that communication would be free of limitations. We are now seeing with algorithms and ideological frames that it isn't exactly like that", analyses Marcelo Ernandez, a professor of Dialogic Communications at UERJ (Rio State University) that studied community newspapers distribution. "This discussion is actually more linked to politics than technology. You can have a dialogic structure without it being necessarily attached to internet access".

This dialogue is sought by these journalists in the fight against stereotypes. "We [as favelados] are traditionally presented mainly in the police section of the commercial newspapers, without name nor family name", states Gizele Martins, a veteran of community journalism in Rio, adding that said stigma boosts the criminalization of black bodies. In the city's approximately a thousand favelas, 67% of the locals are black. In contrast, in journalism, the representation of black people in newsrooms and universities is historically lacking.

Exact numbers on newspapers originated in Rio favelas are difficult to untangle due to their informal development and lack of specialized historical research. Their impact, however, is as straight as it can be, at least in the local level. But sometimes it extrapolates.

Michele Silva, Michel´s sister and herself also a journalist, remembers the piercing power of their local journalism when she recalled to LJR a pretty standard newspaper distribution back in 2013. After taking pictures of their action, Michele was searched a few weeks later by the family of a missing man that was framed in their photos. The man was the bricklayer known as Amarildo, who was killed by state agents from the pacifying police units.

"That's when the penny dropped as to how our work could cross with the residents daily lives and how as I was not just a local, but a journalist as well", she remembers. Michel recalls that the photo circulated worldwide and helped counterpoint the initial narrative that Amarildo was connected to drug dealers, backed by the police officers in order to criminalize the victim.

Stories like that, even though they are definitely important, are not the bread and butter of community newspapers. Amidst hard news, they also tackle service journalism, which is especially pressing in a borough with nearly 6,529 commercial enterprises according to the Economic Census of 2010. Profiles of residents are also a must in order to put in stone the often overlooked oral history of the favela, shining a light in its rich tapestry of culture, stories and traditions.

Maré de Notícias (News from Maré) walks a similar path. Inside one of the Rio's largest favela complexes (grouping more than 10), the newspaper also has a distinct local approach, sowing their printed versions for over 50 thousand residents. Dani Moura, co-founder of the outlet recalled to LJR that an internal research showed their newspaper was the main news source of news in the area. "There are many people that have no other source of info outside our newspaper"

Albeit the newspaper has institutional backing from a known NGO, unlike Fala Roça, the publication has many of the same common issues than other community media initiatives.

Due to historic lack of funding, many successful newspapers have gaps in their printing issues chronology, alternating between being an fully online publication to releasing monthly or bimonthly issues in order to dilute the dollar-attached printing expenses.

In reality, the publications have a more grounded reason for existing, since even Internet access is a complex topic in favelas. While its younger residents have been notoriously "super-plugged", connectivity is still in a grey zone. 3G and 4G Internet is not enough or is inefficient in 43% of homes in favelas, according to Institute Locomotiva.

The same institute, during a live stream on the subject of telecom infrastructure, stated through its president, Renato Meirelles, that internet quality helps differentiate rich and poors in Brazil.

“In all our studies, either the lack of technology appeared as a problem, or technology appeared as a solution. Many of the favelados have access to the Internet when they are on the edge of the favela, not when they are at home. While the richest have computers in 83% of their homes, this number drops to less than 20% among favela residents. Everyone has smartphones, but 86% of those who have a prepaid cell phone, the plan ends before the scheduled period”, he pointed out.

This Schrodinger scenario has been especially damning in Rio's favelas,where many young people simply could not study for their SAT equivallent (ENEM) exam in 2020 and many others simply did could not download their classes material during the pandemic. Others simply gave up.

The data is backed empirically, as Dani Moura, explained that there really are a lot of internet dead zones areas inside Maré. Even their newsroom suffered from bad connectivity. To solve this issue they contracted a provider with experience servicing in Rocinha,luckily to great success.

When the Covid pandemic started in 2020, both connectivity and the physical newspaper became even more important, and sometimes a matter of life and death, since the virus hit favelas harder than in 121 countries. To prevent further gatherings and close contact between the residents and the distribution team, Redes decided to use painting in their reaching effort, mirroring mural paintings.

Another innovation front is fact-checking. As recently as october last year Agência Lupa, one of Brazil´s most notable fact-checking agency partnered with Maré de Notícias in order to help dig and stop the spread of fake news. Thais Cavalcante,

A great example of innovations provided by these newspapers are data investigations centered around favelas, notoriously forgotten. Michel wrote a story about the quantity of trash cans distributed in the main road that connects Rocinha with its high income neighbors. Rocinha had one, while the others had 17.

Newspapers, in this scenario, therefore provide a tangible and somewhat reliable resource of information, complementing and enriching an already complex media landscape. This, combined with organized activism by human rights groups, black movements, feminist collectives and others ended up providing a notable evolution in the way the traditional media covers favela.

Also, it breeds a very particular set of journalists, with an extra knowledge that a famous human rights activist in Rio once called "ruologia"(streetology).

"These professionals tend to circulate throughout the city so they have a much broader perception" opinates Theresa Williamson "Because of that they tend to approach both the favela and the city in a more balanced way"

Dani Moura is actually trying to boost new talents, since many of those that passes in community newspapers end going to more traditional outlets.

At least in the favelas, this microcosm of Brazil, the impact of the real world papers seems to be real. Not singular, plural.