Print Media Industry in Brazil

Ana Gabriela Verotti Farah

Staff Writer
The Brazil Business

Updated

18 April 2014

Printed newspapers and magazines are still very prevalent even with the implementation of technology in news media. Learn in this article how this sector is doing in Brazil.

Since technology gained prominence in Brazil, the local print media is facing a crisis, trying to create means to survive the ease and swiftness of spreading news via the internet. Major players in the sector encountered difficulties in the model of business management, being obliged to adapt themselves to the new gadgets and apps, in order to get readers’ attentions.

However, most Brazilian's means of communication have failed at some point when trying to reinvent themselves according to the revolution brought by the internet - which accounted for job losses for several employees over the past few years.

Media “Owners”

The Brazilian media market is dominated by some influential people and a few rich families. The family Marinho, owner of Globo, the largest free-to-air television channel of Brazil, commands half of the printed editorial market in Brazil alongside the Civita family. Victor Civita was the founder of Editora Abril, which holds 60% of the market with Editora Globo, the publisher of Marinho family.

Editora Abril is part of the Grupo Abril, which is a group of conglomerate companies. Both Editora Abril and Editora Globo focus more on magazines, being weekly or monthly publications. In terms of newspapers, the largest ones can be found in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Newspapers

Newspaper circulation in Brazil decreased 1.9% in 2013, when the daily average approximated 4.43 million newspapers. Until 2012, newspaper circulation showed an upwards trend, and the average of newspapers per day in that year totaled 4.52 million.

In Rio, the most famous and widespread newspaper is O Globo - another publication from the Marinho family. In São Paulo, the most known newspapers are Folha de S.Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo, owned by the families Frias and Mesquita, respectively.

In the South of Brazil, the Sirotsky family commands the conglomerate RBS group, which owns nine newspaper, including Zero Hora, the largest newspaper in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Curiously, the number one newspaper in terms of distribution is Super Notícia, a popular publication in Belo Horizonte which was created in 2002 and surpassed Folha de S.Paulo in 2008, selling 315,157 copies. Super Notícia is owned by Editora Sempre, which is a part of Grupo SADA, one of the largest economic groups of Minas Gerais, whose main company is Sada Transportes, the target transport company of automotive vehicles in Latin America.

Top 10 Newspapers by Circulation

In terms of circulation, Brazil’s 10 largest newspapers are the following:

Magazines

Different from countries such as India and Russia, where the economic growth of the poorest populations accompanied the growth of magazines sales, in Brazil reading habits haven't changed much. Plus, magazines have the internet as their worst enemy, since information is more easily accessible moving from one link to another.

In fact, the editorial market for magazines decreased in the past few years, which resulted in a number of dismissals by the largest publisher of magazines in the country, Editora Abril, as well as the closure of some magazines. The circulation of the publisher’s most famous magazines either decreased or stagnated. Veja magazine, for instance, which is the most read in the country, dropped from 1.086.200 to 1.071.500 magazines between 2010 and 2012.

For Editora Globo, the panorama is quite the same, since its flagship Época also recorded a decrease in its circulation, dropping from 408,000 to 389,000 magazines, also between 2010 and 2012.

Adequating

In order to adapt to the new media, since the middle of 2012, Brazilian newspapers have been adopting the paywall system, which grants that a certain number of publications can be accessed for free, and, once this limit is surpassed, it is necessary to pay for the content. This practice was “inspired” by foreign papers like The New York Times and Financial Times.

The result is that 9 out of the 30 largest newspapers in Brazil have already implemented the paywall system, with 3 of the 10 largest in that number.

Magazines, in their own right, are also adapting to the internet in order to revert the drops in number of circulation of the publications. Some of them already have versions of their websites for pcs, tablets and smartphones as well.