From now on, you will be able to read this column on early Saturdays (for your weekend reading pleasure). I hope to improve its quality, offering more content from news agencies, newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs. The Weekly Headlines articles (that covered the three main Brazilian weekly magazines) weren’t getting much response, so I will stop with those, at least for now.
I hope you like the new format. Comments will – as always – be welcome!
Culture
Economy
Fellow bloggers:
I am starting a Blog Carnival that will put together links to cool posts about Brazil by other authors. The first edition will be released in exactly one month. If this works well, it might become a monthly happening. It will look like this or this.
If you wrote a post you are particularly proud of, something that could use more readers, please, submit it here. The Brazilian Blog Carnival will gather quality English texts about all sorts of topics, from Culture to Tourism, from Sports to Economy. So, don’t be misled by its name: this is not a Brazilian Carnival about Brazilian Carnival ;)
Spread the word!
In the next few weeks, I intend to change several features of this blog. It will be moving from WordPress.com to a self hosted version. I hope it will gain flexibility – wider columns, space for more content and, maybe, some ads.
I am not a computer wizard, so this process might be painful. Please, be patient. I believe I will be back to regular business soon.
I am also looking for ways to make the design friendlier and more pleasant. I would really appreciate if you could give me your feedback on these topics:
- Do you like the look of the website? Too many/few photos?
- Is it easy to read? Would you prefer a different font/letter size?
- Can you figure where the links are (or maybe they are too discreet)?
- Would you like to have more/less blank spaces?
Thanks! I hope you will enjoy the new look of Deep Brazil.
Today, a little over three months after launching Deep Brazil, I had a visitor from Puerto Rico – the hundredth country to pay a visit. Thanks, whoever you are! And thanks to all of you, silent or noisy guests. I hope to keep helping and entertaining all of you in the future.
Not so bad! I began to post only 11 days ago. Thanks, Ezra.
Isn’t it cool? Tea and Food, a great food blog discreetly focused on ethics and sustainability published my post on Brazilian dishes. Thanks, Aaron!
“Nation of the future”. “Sex paradise”. “Wonderland of pickpockets”. “The emerging economy that grows in the rhythm of samba”.
Stop right there. There is more in Brazil than meets the eye.
Thank God, it is exotic, erotic and chaotic – to borrow an expression used by Dean Graber to describe how the international press sees the country. He is a brazilianist from Austin, Texas, that I met briefly years ago. But these beaten clichés are getting old. As a journalist I am well aware of the use of mental frames to make communication easier. To some extent, clichés help us understand the world. This doesn’t mean we should buy them without questioning.
Naturally, if you cannot read Portuguese, you have limited options to escape the beaten paths. That’s why I came up with the idea of launching the Deep Brazil blog. This will be a space to cover interesting aspects of Brazilian Visual Arts, Architecture, Media, Music, Cuisine, Fashion, Folklore – but not your average “culture for export”. I also intend to give a panorama of Politics, Economy, social issues and other themes that are often covered hastily by the foreign press. No hurt feelings, fellow journalists. I know it is hard to evade clichés when you have to write three stories a day. Plus, let’s face it. Brazil is not so easy to understand. Most of the time, I don’t get it, myself.
So, whoever is listening, welcome to Deep Brazil. Please, visit often, leave suggestions of new topics and spread the word.
