Excellent interactive map at the NYT

Boy, the New York Times Web site sure has come a long way from looking like a carbon copy of its print edition.

This excellent interactive map/infographic of Hillary Clinton's Africa visit not only tracks her route through the different countries, but also offers blurbs summarizing her message at each stop, links out to related NYT articles, and features embedded audio and video clips of significant events in the various destinations.

What they could add to this are links to noteworthy pieces on other Web sites, especially citizen blogs and independent news sites, hence allowing traffic back and forth.

And if they're going through all that trouble, they might as well allow me to embed it as well!

Would it KILL the NY Times to Get a Brazil Correspondent Who Is Professionally Ethical?

I often complained about the job Larry Rohter used to do as the Brazil correpondent for the NY Times, often blatantly showing his anti-Lula partisanship and getting the basic facts of a story wrong. I celebrated when Rohter was replaced, even wishing that "Now, maybe we'll finally get somebody competent to report on Brazil for the Times (even if it is not permanent)."

Well, apparently I was wishing for way too much. Alexei Barrionuevo, the new Brazil correspondent for the Times, has apparently plagiarized from other newspaper sources not once, but twice, with both coming to surface in the last two weeks. First, in late February, he wrote this piece on the paco (smokeable cocaine) crisis in Argentina, all the while sampling freely from articles from 2006 in the Christian Science Monitor and the Miami Herald (for a comparison of Barrionuevo's "work" and the previous reports, see this article here.) Barrionuevo said he must have "accidentally" mixed reports when working on his own material.

However, just this week, it was revealed that Barrionuevo apparently had plagiarized previously, copying a report on mad cow restrictions from Bloomberg news. As the Slate article comments, it's hard to believe you "accidentally" mixed your sources when you've done it more than once, with your reports looking strikingly like somebody else's work. This shouldn't even have to be said, particularly for a correspondent at the Times, but nonetheless, it apparently and unfortunately has to be said again: plagiarism is unacceptable (and Shafer offers 8 reasons why plagiarism is unacceptable, and while some of them are a little professionally self-absorbed, they are still worth remembering, even if few people really care anymore).

Now, would it be so damn difficult for the Times to get a Brazil correspondent who both knows what she/he is doing AND is ethical??? I'm not a journalist, so maybe I missed some valuable lessons in journalism classes I never took, but it strikes me that journalists have two basic obligations that should come before everything else when reporting: get the basic facts right, and don't plagiarize. Now, the Times has replaced a man who couldn't get the basic facts right with one who's plagiarizing. Ridiculous.

Brazil's Oil Field Discovery - Why the Journalistic Comparisons to Bolivia and Venezuela?

I commented on this the first time around 2 months ago, but for those who missed it, the NY Times has an article up on Brazil's major oil-field discovery last year. It's detailed, going over the way and the investment involved in finding the field, the challenges facing Brazil to produce the oil in the field, and a comparison between Petrobras (the nationalized oil company in Brazil) and Bolivia and Venezuela. On the latter, I'm not quite sure why they include this. In one sense, it is useful in giving a broad comparison to the varieties of the ways in which nationalized oil works, showing it's complicated nature and not just relying on "Nationalized?? Why, they must be dirty, baby-killing COMMIES!!!" narrative. Still, at the same time, I also kind of feel like the comparison is done to say, "See? Brazil isn't as crazy or antagonistic as Chávez or Morales is!!" Anyhow, if you didn't know much about this discovery, check out the NY Times article.

Why I Generally Hate Travel Writing

This review of São Paulo is an example of everything wrong with travel sections: cultural imperialism, the "the world is my playground and I can't be inconvenienced with things like poverty", the "I'm here to see how the rich live" narrative, the "the third world is dirty and ugly" meta-narrative, "other class-cultures are crass to me" (the complaint about graffiti, which, from having seen it personally, is quite well done and artistic), the complete ignoring of social and economic problems while simultaneously trying to find the best "values" possible...it has it all. I don't love São Paulo, but this article is just as offensive, ridiculous, ignorant, and neo-colonialist as they come.

It's about time

Randy e-mailed me some good news yesterday, buried at the bottom of this NY Times article:

"LARRY ROHTER, who has just completed eight and a half years as chief of the Rio de Janeiro bureau of The Times, is on leave, writing a book about Brazil."

I've hoped for this for a long time. Now, maybe we'll finally get somebody competent to report on Brazil for the Times (even if it is not permanent).

Beaches, Racism, and Classism in Brazil

There's another tantalizing-but-ultimately-frustrating article at New York times on race and class in Rio today. The title "Drawing Lines Across the Sand, Between Classes" hits perfectly on the divisions within Rio, and there are some great examples. Rohter (not the greatest writer on the topic, and that's putting it nicely) does a pretty good job of beginning to delve into how the beaches in Rio are far from democratic, despite Roberto DaMatta's (who loves his stark dichotomies like none other) claims otherwise.

However, the article is also extremely frustrating because it does just that - he only begins to delve into the issue. Thus, we get tantalizing insights into classism (like the poor vendor who says the clients on the beach treat him like he doesn't even exist) and even racism (the wealthy Ipanema resident who complained about the "dark-skinned teenagers with that dyed blonde hair"). However, they are just quotations - Rohter never actually openly points out how indicative this is of the classism and racism that exist in Brazilian society, or that these quotes exist among a large portion of the population even while the citizens protest otherwise (more than once have I heard that America is racist while Brazil is not).

Additionally, there is very little contextualization. For example, while he quotes somebody who claims that "Ipanema is always in the vanguard, but Leblon has more of a family vibe", there's no mention of the fact that Leblon is even wealthier, and far more elitist and snobby (the Leblon woman's complaint about the risks a "defenseless sunbather" faces in such grave threats as the presence of dogs, paddleball, and surfers in the area perfectly hits on the elitism prevalent in Leblon as well, even if there are no surfers in Leblon, something the article itself mentions) than even Ipanema residents (which is saying something).

Even worse, Rohter only focuses on Ipanema and Leblon, which are in and of themselves two of the most elitist beaches (and, to be honest, not coincidentally two of the nicest) there are in Rio (he leaves out Barra de Tijuca). For example, there is no analysis or even inclusion of Copacabana and Flamengo. While these parts of the city are still middle class, there are far more poor people and minorities on these beaches, people who can't afford to go all the way to Ipanema from their homes in the North Zone (the poorer part) of the city. Thus, as somebody who's lived here for the last 5 months, and been here before, it seems rather obvious that Rohter himself never left the Leblon/Ipanema area to explore how the classism and racism spread beyond those two rather-elite beaches.

Despite these complaints, however, Rohter's article is well worth checking out, for it brings up some of the unspoken aspects of beach life in Rio that rarely make their way into the international image of Rio's beach culture.

UPDATE: The story was big enough that it actually made news in O Globo, Brazil's largest newspaper (there is no comparison in the U.S.). I initially saw it on the subway today, in the first section, on page sixteen, in an article titled "NYT overthrows the "myth" of beach-democracy". You can read the article in Portuguese here. Not surprisingly, O Globo goes into absolutely no depth or self-analysis of Brazil, instead just reporting segments of what Rohter wrote (and thus making Rohter's relatively superficial analysis look remarkably deep). It comes as no surprise that Globo doesn't actually ask questions about inequality in Brazil as it plays out on the beach (or anywhere else for that matter), and it is interesting that they put the myth of beach-democracy in quotation marks (perhaps distancing themselves from Rohter's suggestion that the beach isn't a democracy, thus implying Globo's stance that Brazil is egalitarian on the beach and elsewhere, a theme which pops up repeatedly). Finally, it is just interesting that Rohter's article is important enough that it has made national news here, perhaps due to its potential to make Brazilians react against his article or (nod their heads in agreement). Time will tell what (if any) reaction happens here...