By HENRY BURNETT*

Reading Janio on Sundays for the last four years was a refuge, one of the only reasons I kept paying Sheet

I've done almost insane things to read the Folha de S. Paul. He lived in a Cohab complex in the Coqueiro neighborhood, in the municipality of Ananindeua, next to Belém; something like Guarulhos in relation to São Paulo. I was almost certainly the only newspaper subscriber for miles around. So far so good.

The problem is that the subscription had to cost five times more than the value of the Southeast and the newspaper, you can laugh, it was not rare for it to be delivered the next day. So he often read the paper with a delay that, in the world of news, could be fatal.

The reason for that absurd expense for an unemployed student was simple: the newspapers in Belém were contaminated by provincial politics and I thought that the “biggest newspaper in the country” was exempt.

But soon other reasons made me dependent on that reading. Marcelo Coelho was my favorite. This was cultural journalism of the highest order and it made no difference to read your columns the day after publication.

I will never forget Arnaldo Jabor's debut in the newspaper. He wrote, I quote from memory almost thirty years later, about the painting by Diego Velázquez The girls. It was dazzling. “Read” a painting; I saw that for the first time, in a newspaper!

I cannot even confirm the information in the Collection of Sheet, because the day before yesterday I definitely canceled my digital subscription (it would have been much better if that had existed back then…). After so many years of reading this newspaper – against several tips from friends who always warned me about the ambiguities distilled in the editorials – I was defeated.

When I heard about the resignation of journalist Janio de Freitas, I didn't understand for a few minutes – again I was trying to understand the newspaper, to give it some credit. Having published two or three collaborations and feeling “the center of the world”, I felt drained; It's about time.

I tried to cancel my subscription the first time right after Lula's victory. Curious, Freud explains. I was already feeling the ambiguity (?) of the newspaper hitting the ceiling, but then before opening the editorial, the day after the victory, I thought to myself, “the Sheet will charge Lula one day after the investigation”. Potato, Nelson Rodrigues would say (why did I remember him?). The editorial was there confirming my intuition.

I enter the chat and ask to cancel. The attendant, amazingly, suggested that I read the Ombudsman as an argument for agreeing to pay “1,90 for three months, then 9,90”. I asked if he was suggesting that I keep the subscription to read the only column that criticized the newspaper and the answer was yes. But I said I already read it, he and Janio de Freitas, and Marcelo Coelho, of course. I extended it for another year… (it was already a case of hospitalization, I know).

But Janio's firing was too much. I remember that he had subtly complained when the newspaper reduced his contribution from two to a single Sunday column. Reading Janio on Sundays for the last four years was a refuge, one of the only reasons I kept paying Sheet.

How does a newspaper fire its most important journalist, whose integrity and political acuity served as a beacon for dozens of journalists in the country? I read the reason: cut costs… I thought: wouldn't it be a case of tripling the salary to keep a journalist of that quality on the staff of the newspaper? If the New York Times declare vote, why the Sheet remain “non-partisan”? My German friend, at the height of the campaign, told me this: “the Sheet It's on the left." Ledo and Ivo mistake, my dear.

I think this text should be written by a journalist, it is not my case. I'm just a former reader, for whom the newspaper has become an unbearable burden. I canceled receipt of Newsletter, but they keep ordering, as a punishment.

I heard that Marcelo Coelho left with me, out of respect for his colleague. I, who subscribed to the newspaper a lot because of you, felt represented. Thinking about it, his departure makes one believe that there are still honest people left in this world.

*Henry Burnett is a music critic and professor of philosophy at Unifesp. Author, among other books, of Musical mirror of the world (Phi publisher).

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