The urgency of doing local data journalism in the Brazilian Northeast
“Working with data has empowered me. Now, I don’t have to trust what a politician says. I can figure things out by myself,” told a journalist while I interviewed her for my new newsletter Catolé. These words summarize a lot to me. I started to think and learn about the use of data in journalism in 2017 when I had to work with a database to discover if some local legislators had contracted dummy companies. Being able to apply basic data analysis allowed me to report that story and pressure them to pay back R$ 1.7 million (US$ 323,200 in today’s currency). Months later, a lawyer called me to speak about that coverage. He didn’t want to sue me. He was founding an NGO inspired by my work.
Since then, life has shown me again and again how local data journalism is important. How it is a powerful tool to change realities. This is even more important when you live in a place like the one where I live: the Brazilian Northeast is a group of nine states facing historical problems with hunger and hydric supply. We have the second largest population in the country, but also the lowest Human Development Index and the largest number of news deserts (73.5% of towns had no media outlet).
If using data to report issues can create a huge impact in places like New York, imagine the kind of public transformation it can generate in communities like these. Even so, it’s really difficult to do it. Brazil has a great production of data journalism, but it’s almost all concentrated in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the two largest cities. Where I live, in Recife, historical projects like PE Body Count and #UmaPorUma tend to disappear after one or two years, and their knowledge isn’t retained, since the professionals involved are fired due to the shrinkage of newsrooms.
When I joined the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program, helping to fill this gap was my personal challenge. During the last 100 days, I found some responses that I’m anxious to test in the coming months (and yes, the practice of testing and pivoting my ideas was something that I learned early on in this experience).
The first goal of Catolé is to create a platform to collaborate with small independent and digital news organizations in Brazilian Northeast, starting in Pernambuco, the state I live in. Why them? Because they need more help than traditional newspapers and they are looking for new ways of conducting investigations, as I learned working with Retruco.
The second focus is the newsletter itself. It will feed the main goal by not only reaching other news outlets and opening opportunities but also because writing on this topic can encourage people to work with this, put them in contact with each other, cultivate and grow, piece by piece, this data environment. Because together we are powerful.
And don’t get me wrong: people in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are doing great in their data work. But local problems need local reporting. And local data journalism will be essential in days to come.
But what does “Catolé” mean? I know someone will ask that. Well, catolé is a palm tree, really common in the Brazilian Northeast. But it’s not just that. Catolé’s wood, leaf, and fruit fed Palmares, the biggest anti-slavery insurgency in Brazil’s history. I was born in the city where Palmares used to be. I have their blood in my veins. And Catolé is what I’ll use to fight for my beliefs. And we are just starting…
