Stop the Presses: Technological and Cultural Changes in the Political Economy of Print Press Distribution in the Fluminense Context

The aim of this research is to try to understand to what extent the circulation of a newspaper is still able to help characterize it as a major media outlet before public opinion. The idea of a “national” circulation has been worked on by several authors as a true fiction (SEYMOUR-URE, 1991), since it would be impossible to effectively reach such a degree of penetration in society. In reality, these authors claim, what makes a newspaper “national” is much more a result of political and economic variables than of its actual circulation (id.:ibid.). However, businesspeople have continually bet on the fiction of circulation to present their readership base to advertisers and consequently attract investment, through the model that became consolidated in the Brazilian press. In a scenario in which quality papers face a decline in one of their main assets, circulation figures, what strategies can these outlets resort to in an attempt to secure their place of trust not only before the advertising market but above all before their public? And, if circulation is no longer journalism’s fundamental asset, what are the so-called popular newspapers based on, which, in recent years, have seen their single-copy sales definitively boosted? This project intends to map with unprecedented precision the economic scenario of the print press in contemporary Brazil, seeking to establish ruptures and continuities with respect to the pre-internet scenario, and highlighting the role of circulation in the panorama of the political economy of the media. Its proposal is articulated with the efforts of different researchers (cf. ABREU, 2002; BARBOSA, 2007; and others), especially those who have been trying to develop a historical matrix for the Brazilian press, although such results still remain scattered in space and time, in the face of initiatives that seek to develop a theory of journalism, elucidate the history of the main outlets or their most prominent figures and/or evaluate the coverage discourse of major newspapers on specific episodes (cf. MACHADO, 2004; MELO, 2008 etc.). In any case, there is no systematic assessment of what the penetration of these outlets is in the different layers of society and how this penetration helps shape their own symbolic capital. Even less is there an attempt to understand the impact of the change in technological medium on the economic evaluation of these realities. This project pursues an investigation dedicated to understanding the main strategies performed by the actors that occupy the print press market in the country in response to the “crisis” evidenced by the fall in circulation figures of the so-called quality papers, as well as seeking to learn about the political effects of this scenario on the processes of constitution of a public opinion.