"The largest and richest census on the presence of local journalism in Brazil had its sixth edition confirmed this Wed. (March 8, 2023). The announcement of the new News Atlas was made by Projor (Institute for the Development of Journalism), which runs the initiative, and Volt Data Lab, responsible for the organization, analysis and publication of the data to be collected in this edition. Besides updating the map of news outlets in the 5,570 municipalities in the country, the research will collect information related to journalistic activity and about the opening and closing of communication companies.
In the last mapping, which registered 13,734 active news outlets in Brazil, a positive trend was identified for the country: the news deserts, where the population does not have information from local news outlets, were reduced by 9.5%, with 312 municipalities leaving this condition. However, according to the fifth edition, 2,968 cities were still in the list of news deserts - 5 out of 10 municipalities - which means that 29.3 million people (13.8% of the Brazilian population) remained without access to local journalistic information.
The development of a new tool was also disclosed, which will enable the crossing of data from the News Atlas with other databases, so that journalists and researchers can advance in the analysis and exploration of the numbers gathered."
