Founder of longform journalism magazine in Brazil, João Moreira Salles advocates for more diversity in newsrooms

The Brazilian press needs to do more to create diverse newsrooms.

This was the message of João Moreira Salles, founder of the Rio de Janeiro-based magazine piauí, during a recent visit to the University of Texas at Austin.

Salles spoke to journalism students at the University about the principle challenges facing the Brazilian press today, chief among them a lack of diversity in terms of race, economics, gender, religion, geography and media ownership.

“You have to know that a good newsroom is a diverse newsroom. It follows that if you don’t have a diverse newsroom, there’s little chance you’ll end up with a good newsroom. A homogenous newsroom will be very narrow in its focus, in its interests and in its world perspectives, in the way it sees the world,” Salles explained later in an interview with the Knight Center. “It has to do with social justice, but it also has to do with reaching excellence in what you do. And without a diverse newsroom, you will never be excellent.”