O Globo

The newspaper O Globo exists since 1925 and was the pioneer of Grupo Globo. Its average circulation in 2016, adding up print and digital versions, is of around 302,000 copies, with significant circulation in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

It was created in 1925 by Irineu Marinho, who died 21 days after the first publication, leaving his widow, Francisca Marinho, as main owner. Roberto Marinho took the secretary position, becoming the newspaper’s president in 1931. The newspaper circulated in the afternoon from 1925 to 1962, when it became a morning paper. O Globo was the first Brazilian newspaper to circulate on Sundays in 1972. Two years later, Organizações Globo (now Grupo Globo) created Agência O Globo (AOG), which distributes information produced in the companies’ outlets. The agency has over 10 million images, 2 million pages, 10,000 infographics, besides approximately 11 million articles and news reports by the newspapers O Globo and Extra. AOG daily distributes over 300 news from the newspapers' different editorials.

Since 2009, O Globo seeks to establish itself as a multiplatform outlet, following a movement launched in September 2008 with the campaign slogan “O Globo. Much more than a newspaper”, which attempts to make the brand a synonym for “trustworthy information, no matter the vehicle”.

The newspaper O Globo, as many other morning newspapers, sees its columnists as true “anchors” in order to attract readers, and also to guarantee their influence on businesspeople and politicians. During his career, Merval Pereira, one of these references, has occupied several positions at Grupo Globo: columnist at O Globo, political commentator at radio Rede CBN and GloboNews channel. With a liberal perspective on economy, he takes part in events and maintains activities close to business entities of the industrial and financial sectors.

Similar to Merval Pereira, Miriam Leitão appears in different outlets of the group, as economy commentator at TV Globo and GloboNews; she is a columnist at O Globo since 1991. She has a more moderate style regarding general politics; she strongly defends, for example, the punishment of torturers and human rights violators of the civilian-military dictatorship and seeks to keep a distance from the more extreme right-wing. However, she follows a strictly liberal economic line, strongly opposing the progressive and development oriented governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016).

The journalist Lauro Jardim has been a part of some of the most important Brazilian print outlets, such as Jornal do Brasil, Exame magazine and Veja magazine, where he headed the Rio de Janeiro branch between 1998 and 2008 and edited the column Radar between 2000 and 2015. In 2015, Jardim left Veja and went back to the newspaper O Globo, where he had begun his career.

Another columnist of note is Ancelmo Gois, who, in the 1970s worked as a freelancer for specialized news magazines at Editora Abril (like Veja). After a passage at Jornal do Brasil in the early 2000s, he took Ricardo Boechat’s place as a columnist for O Globo, a position he still holds.

Jorge Bastos Moreno, although he died in June 2017, deserves to be mentioned because he had a career of over 40 years, 35 of them at O Globo. He maintained the Blog do Moreno, where he discussed politics in an informal language, with information from the backstage of power in Brasília. In March 2017, he began hosting the Moreno na Rádio talkshow at CBN.

Irineu Marinho founded O Globo stating that his purpose was to “defend popular causes” and to be “independent” of political and economic forces. However, the newspaper relations with political and economic forces has always been tight. As an example, one can list a few known events: In April 1962, as an advocate of the market’s interests, the newspaper published the article “The 13th salary is considered disastrous for the country”; in 1964 it openly supported the military coup; in 2015 and 2016, it supported the impeachment that deposed President Dilma Roussef; and in 2017 it supported Michel Temer’s reforms, an analysis of the articles on his labor reform shows that 88% were favorable, as were 75% of the people interviewed; among articles about the social security reform, 90% of the texts were favorable and 72% of the interviewees were pro-reform, as a study made by the NGO Repórter Brasil points out.