Jornal do Brasil

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Jornal do Brasil, widely known as JB, is a daily newspaper published by Editora JB in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was founded in 1891 and is the third oldest existent Brazilian paper, after the Diário de Pernambuco and O Estado de São Paulo.

[edit] History

It was founded by former supporters of the recently-deposed monarchy and sported conservative views in its early decades. Later on, after a deep restructuring carried on in the 1950s, it became a center-left middle-class newspaper. Many important Brazilian writers and journalists eventually worked for Jornal do Brasil, especially after the 1964 coup-d'état and the closure of some left-wing newspapers, like Última Hora and Correio da Manhã. Jornal do Brasil was an important opposer of the dictatorship, frequently challenging censorship by replacing censored news with cake recipes, blatant lies or decades-old articles.

The paper's opposition to the government cost it dearly and it crossed the decades of 1980 and 1990 under pressure from creditors, always at the brink of bankruptcy. During these days Jornal do Brasil republished content from foreign newspapers (like The Washington Post, El País, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, L'Unità and Chicago Tribune) in its editorial pages.

In 1992 they published an unflattering photo of Henry Kissinger on the front page. Kissinger's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter threatening to sue them if they sold the photo. The newspaper refused and one of the buyers was the advertising agency Woolward & Partners who used it in an ad for computer equipment. Woolward & Partners was also threatened with legal action. The photo was also used in the 1996 book Washington Babylon by Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein.

JB was the first Brazilian newspaper to have an electronic edition which included partial PDF publishing. In 2002, it was sold to businessman Nelson Tanure who restructured it again. It still holds slightly left-wing positions, compared to its major rival, O Globo.

JB is pictured in the Academy Award-nominated film Cidade de Deus, as the newspaper where the main character, Buscapé, begins working as a photographer. The movie is set in Rio de Janeiro during the 1960s-1980s, the golden age of the paper, before it started its long decaying period.

In 2007 diplomat and businessman Marcos Prado Troyjo was brought in as publisher to lead content and design reforms initiated with the adoption of the berliner format a year earlier. Newstand sales rocketed and overall circulation of JB went up 27% in 2007, the most remarkable increase among quality papers in Brazil.