If for Brazilians it sometimes becomes exhausting to understand the current hectic and unpredictable situation in the country, imagine for those who are foreigners and try to keep up with the balance of national politics. Unless they are readers of Folha.
This is because ten years ago Folha de S.Paulo launched Folha Internacional. An information service on Brazil which, aimed at attracting a foreign audience to its journalism, has extended its coverage to English and Spanish.
On the basis of meticulous and daily curation of information, non-Portuguese speaking readers are kept abreast of the most relevant events in the country in the fields of economics, politics, science, culture and sports.
“The mission of a newspaper like Folha is to bring its quality content also to foreign readers, wherever they are, with information written in two of the most widely spoken languages in the world”, explains the editorial director of Folha. , Sérgio Dávila.
Spanish lawyer Esther Fernández started visiting the home of the Spanish version of Folha Internacional on the recommendation of a friend after reviewing a job offer in São Paulo.
“Reading the events in Spanish is a good way to understand what I will find when I arrive in Brazil,” he says. She says what catches her attention the most is the pace of events. “Everything changes very quickly, so I don’t get totally lost, I have to keep up to date,” says Esther.
Satisfied with the selection of news, subscribed to the English version newsletter and language teacher Marlene Andreetto underlines the informative richness of the short texts that she receives daily.
In the ten years, the published articles which received the most audience were: the first report on the charges against João de Deus for sexual abuse, in the English version, and the article on the new immigration rules for foreigners in Brazil, in Spanish.
The periods which concentrate the greatest number of visits correspond to the 2014 World Cup, to Operation Lava Jato at the end of 2016, to the electoral conflict of 2018 and, of course, to the pandemic.
A curiosity of the international service is that, even with the predominance of Hispanic countries on the South American continent, the English texts of Folha give, on average, twice as many visits as those in Spanish. In the English version, 40% of the readers are in Brazil. Then appear in the list of countries the USA (28%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), New Zealand (3.6%) and Canada (2.3%).
The Spanish audience is quite varied and comes mainly from Argentina (25%) and Peru (23%). Next come Colombia (11%), Uruguay (11%), Spain (8.5%), Brazil (6.8%), Chile (3.2%), Paraguay (2, 7%), Venezuela (1.7%) and Bolivia (1%).
To access the content of Folha Internacional, readers can access the home page of Folha de S.Paulo or the newsletter with the headlines of the day, which is sent from Monday to Friday to the emails of previously registered users.