Editorial
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – It’s Christmas time… in Brazil. It will be about 90 degrees today, and my 18 inch plastic Christmas tree is decorated next to the TV. There are some presents to exchange, and a whole bunch of rabanaba to consume and holiday spirits to cheer.
This time of year is always very busy, and it is the first Christmas and New Year season we are publishing our Print edition, in addition to the regular Online Weekly. That means a it will be a Christmas miracle if we’re not working on Christmas, to get the January Print issue on the streets by December 30th.
But it is good fun work and we’re not complaining, and constantly learning how to make it run better. With any luck, next year at Christmas time we’ll be publishing twice-monthly, which should be interesting.
In the news this week is a eye-opening report on the amount of funds recovered from corruption in the political and governmental system. Just last week we saw Brazil’s global ranking of corruption on at 73rd, which sounded encouraging, but to see only fifteen percent of stolen public funds retrieved, and Brazil only prosecuting ten percent of the corruption cases that the U.S. does is… discouraging.
Then again, the ship doesn’t turn on a dime and the progress Brazil is experiencing is amazing, the economy now the sixth largest, consumer spending on an all-time high and just eight more years until Brazil hopes to be the third largest oil producer in the world.
Things are changing fast, and thinking about what was happening a year ago, President Dilma Rousseff was just taking office, the battle for Complexo do Alemão in Rio’s Zona Norte (North Zone) had just been fought, and they had just broken ground on the Rock in Rio City of Rock.
The Rio Times had about 40,000 pageviews per month last year, now we have about 110,00, that feels like a blessing. We already mentioned above how we had not started our Print edition yet, and now that I think about it, we had not had our site redesign yet.
I know we are not supposed to get so reflective on time passing until next week for New Years, but ’tis the season’. Imagine what will be happening next year for Christmas… For now I’ll try to live in the moment, and go find some rabanaba.
Merry Christmas e Feliz Natal!
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