200 Editions: A Milestone to Celebrate
By Paulo Abrão* and James N. Green**
The weekly newsletter of the Brazil Office Alliance completes its 200th issue in the first week of April. We are very happy and proud to reach this milestone because it represents our commitment to maintaining a regular, reliable, democratic, accessible, free, and bilingual communication channel for almost 4 years, practically without interruption.
Two hundred weeks of publication is an enviable milestone not only for publications of civil society organizations, like ours, but also for any media outlet that intends to cultivate an audience and create a lively debate with its readers, without ever deviating from any political, economic, legal, social, or environmental issue among those that make up the agenda of legitimate interests of our society.
We are all living in a challenging world, in which internet posts and short videos on social networks constantly compete for our attention, rivaling in-depth, denser, and more structured content. This fragmented, fast-paced, and often chaotic environment only adds value to our mission, which is to focus on more in-depth articles and analyses, written based on proven facts, with scientific rigor in both Portuguese and English in order to deliver to our 3,000 readers contributions that are truly valuable and make a difference.
Throughout these 200 issues, the Aliança Brazil Office newsletter has followed the events that have changed the course of Brazilian politics. Through explanatory news, well-founded editorials, and articles written by external guests, we strive to give the true dimension and context to events as complex as the Lava Jato Operation and as traumatic as the failed coup attempt of January 8, 2023. We reflect on threats to the environment; U.S. interventionism in Brazil; public security policies; gender issues; race, social and economic inequality; human rights; the defense of democracy; and respect for indigenous, riverside, and extractive communities.
This impressive milestone of 200 issues would not have been reached, however, without the committed involvement of hundreds of people who, over these almost four years, have generously and competently shared their knowledge with us, writing dozens of articles that we deliver to our readers. Having this immense network of qualified collaborators is a treasure that we greatly value. We therefore want to share this achievement with all of them, as well as publicly acknowledge and express our gratitude to these friends of the Alliance, on whom we have counted until now and hope to continue counting on for at least another 200 issues.
As another election approaches, we see the challenge of explaining this important political moment to an international audience eager to learn about the Brazilian electoral process, as well as the parties, candidates, proposals, and challenges that, in recent years, have increased, bringing disturbing threats to democracy in the country.
To address this moment, we will circulate a second newsletter throughout the year, also weekly, but dedicated exclusively to the elections. This new publication will be delivered to all regular subscribers, in English, by email, free of charge. In addition, a special page is already online, entirely dedicated to providing information and context about this year's Brazilian electoral process. In this new initiative, we have the valuable partnership of our friends at The Brazilian Report, with whom we have made a joint content production agreement for these elections – not only to produce the electoral bulletin and the website, but also new episodes of our already traditional podcast, Brazil Unfiltered.
In celebrating the historic milestone of 200 issues, we also celebrate future projects, with which we renew our ambitions and commitments, to always live up to the expectations and needs of such loyal and educated readers interested in following Brazilian reality from the perspective of Brazilian civil society.
*Paulo Abrão is the executive director of the WBO.
*James N. Green is the chairman of the WBO's Board of Directors.
