Ahead of this year’s presidential election, The Brazilian Report co-founder Gustavo Ribeiro speaks with LJR about helping foreign audiences make sense of the country beyond the headlines.
There’s a famous phrase attributed to bossa nova composer Tom Jobim — “Brazil is not for beginners” — that has endured and applies particularly well to the country’s politics. In this year’s presidential campaign season, at least two Supreme Court justices have become embroiled in what is becoming one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s history, further straining Brazil’s increasingly contentious relationship with the United States.
And Brazilian journalists have to keep up with the relentless news cycle. For those reporting for audiences abroad, however, they must also synthesize, provide context, and explain for their readers.
That’s one of the roles of The Brazilian Report (TBR), a Brazilian outlet catering specifically to foreign audiences. Gustavo Ribeiro, the outlet’s founder and a journalist, said that when he began developing the idea for the publication, he and co-founder Laura Quirin felt Brazil was disproportionately portrayed by international news sites as exotic and chaotic, with analysis coming from visiting correspondents, consulting firms and foreign think tanks.
The goal for TBR, Ribeiro said, was not only to translate Brazil for foreign audiences, but also to help Brazil speak for itself.
LatAm Journalism Review (LJR) spoke with Ribeiro about the election, growing tensions between Brazil and the U.S., and how to maintain a Brazilian identity while serving an international audience. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1 - Brazil is going through a highly polarized election, with geopolitical tensions with the United States playing a role. What has the coverage process been like for you and your colleagues?
In a polarized election, the amount of noise is enormous: statements, responses, rebuttals — everything becomes a headline. Our job is precisely the opposite: to separate the noise from what actually affects the market and Brazil’s position on the geopolitical chessboard.
We try to go beyond statements. Instead of simply repeating what someone said, we try to explain why they said it, what each actor wants and what motivates their moves. That is worth much more than the quote of the day.
2 - As a Brazilian journalist, how do you strike the right balance when reporting on, explaining and providing context about Brazil for foreign audiences — removing what’s redundant without removing the essence of the country’s identity?
The first step is to truly know the audience: who is reading, what that person already knows and what they need to make decisions. But the balance lies in not delivering only what they want, but what they need to understand Brazil. Sometimes that means spending three paragraphs explaining why the Centrão [a complex bloc of politicians in Congress that works towards their own interests] works the way it does, because without that, none of the rest makes sense.
What we remove is the redundant, not the Brazilian character. And I have to say that the fact that our CEO and co-founder, Laura Quirin, is French-Brazilian and not a journalist helps a lot. She is our resident foreigner. She reads everything from the perspective of someone who wasn’t born into the game and asks the obvious questions that we, as Brazilians, no longer see. That helps correct a lot of our blind spots.
3 - TBR went from a traditional news website to a closed, newsletter-focused outlet. What led to that decision, and what were its main financial and editorial consequences?
There were a few factors. The first was the behavior of our own audience. We always had paid products, and newsletters were included in the most expensive plan.
What we realized was that subscribers wanted to receive the content, not go to the website to look for it. The product people valued most was already the newsletter. The second factor was strategic: We did not want to depend so heavily on social media algorithms, which can change the rules of the game without warning. An email database belongs to us, no one can take it away.
Financially, the bet has paid off: We have grown subscription revenue by 21% this year. Editorially, we gained focus. Today, we have a political newsletter every morning and topic-specific verticals in the afternoon, each aimed at a clearly defined reader.
4 - A few months ago, The Brazilian Report and another company developed the “Debating Brazil” project, in which presidential candidates were invited to speak. At one event, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who’s a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and is running for president, repeated false claims about Brazil’s electronic voting system. What role does journalism play in creating this kind of space, and what do you see as journalism’s responsibility correcting any falsehoods during a debate?
We created Debating Brazil out of a conviction that Brazil neglects foreign policy far too much during election campaigns, and in a world like today’s, that can no longer be the case. So, we organized a series around the presidential election that brought the president of the Superior Electoral Court and the candidates together to speak directly with ambassadors from partner countries. More than 70 embassies have already attended the events. This is journalism creating a space for debate that did not previously exist.
The episode involving Flávio Bolsonaro was complicated. The event was not intended to be a debate or a grilling. The format was designed to give candidates a chance to present their vision of Brazil to ambassadors, and we do not control what that vision is. We gave them space regardless of whether we agreed with what they said, because otherwise, the event becomes ideological curation and loses its meaning.
It was not my place to interrupt a candidate in the middle of his speech to conduct a live fact-check. For better or worse, Flávio showed the diplomats exactly who he is, and they are adults with good advisers. But our journalistic work did not end when the event was over. We wrote about it for our subscribers, and that is when we conducted all the necessary fact-checking and pointed out what was false.
5 - TBR has a strong intelligence and consulting division tailored specifically to foreign clients, including businesspeople and journalists. As a journalist and founder of The Report, how do you reconcile journalism with this kind of consulting work?
The intelligence work we do is, essentially, journalistic work — reporting, context and analysis — but specifically tailored to the needs of an individual client. A fund may want to understand the fiscal risks of the next government. An embassy may want to know who really calls the shots in a ministry.
We use the same tools we use in the newsroom. What we never do is lobbying. We do not represent a client’s interests before anyone, advocate for anyone’s agenda or mix the two sides: What a client asks for does not become a story, and what we publish is not commissioned.
And we have already turned down requests from companies whose values did not align with ours or whose involvement would have created a conflict of interest.
