In-depth reporting: O GLOBO tells stories in real time

• O GLOBO: Proud of our history, looking to the future
• In english: Read more stories on O GLOBO's website

In 1952, O GLOBO reported on the start of the first gold rush in the Amazon Forest, in the Rio Jari region of Amapá. From then on, various waves led thousands into the jungle in pursuit of the precious metal. The largest of these movements began in 1980 on a hill in Serra dos Carajás, in southeastern Pará, called Serra Pelada. By the end of that year, about 30,000 prospectors were on site. By 1984, the number had more than doubled. Two years later, a report titled "Serra Pelada: greed turned mining into a powder keg" described the war-like atmosphere fueled by power struggles and wealth concentration in the hands of a few. Violence and corruption were rampant, with fears that the government might hand the deposit over to Vale do Rio Doce, the landowner. The following year, dozens of prospectors were killed by police and military in the Ponte Massacre.

In October 1930, a young Roberto Marinho was the reporter assigned to wait outside the Palácio Guanabara for the departure of then-President Washington Luís, who had just been deposed by the coup that brought Getúlio Vargas to power, ending the Old Republic. Noticing a politician’s car about to leave, the Rio journalist spread tree branches on the street, creating an obstacle that forced the vehicle to slow down as it exited. This pause allowed the photographer to capture the leader leaving the palace in the back seat of the car. The image of this historic moment took up more than half of GLOBO's front page on October 24.

Weeks after Getúlio Vargas's suicide on August 24, 1954, O GLOBO published a special section with unprecedented details about the events leading to the attack on journalist Carlos Lacerda and the death of the then-president. An editorial innovation at the time, the section titled "The Black Book of Corruption" featured the Air Force's unprecedented report on the historic attack.

In 1956, reporter José Leal walked into the newsroom with quite a story. For six months, battling alcoholism, he was interned at a public sanatorium, the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of Brazil (now UFRJ). He recounted his experiences within the institution in the report "180 Days on the Edge of Madness" and won GLOBO's first Esso Journalism Award.

Irineu Marinho founded the newspaper during a time of political upheaval in Brazil, as the so-called Old Republic was targeted by the tenentista movement's revolts. The Coluna Prestes, a campaign against President Artur Bernardes, began in 1924. Led by military figures Miguel Costa and Luiz Carlos Prestes, the march spanned 13 Brazilian states with approximately 1,500 men and lasted over two years. In January 1927, O GLOBO started publishing a serialized chronicle of the expedition written by João Baptista Luzardo, a deputy from Rio Grande do Sul and the only defender of the column in Parliament, who was familiar with the movement and was even imprisoned in 1925 for allegedly conspiring against Bernardes.

The remarkable wealth accumulation by some politicians has always been a topic in national news, but few reports illustrated it as tangibly as the series "Men of Wealth from Alerj." Published in 2004, the project engaged journalists Angelina Nunes, Alan Gripp, Carla Rocha, Dimmi Amora, Flávio Pessoa, Luiz Ernesto Magalhães, and Maiá Menezes. They spent four months immersed in the asset declarations of deputies elected to the Legislative Assembly of Rio (Alerj) in 1998 and 2002. Then, they spent two more months in the field documenting signs of wealth. The reports exposed shocking cases of asset variation, winning the Esso Journalism Award that year.

In 2013, the Paraty International Literary Festival (Flip) paid tribute to writer Graciliano Ramos, one of Brazil's most important novelists. Inspired by this, reporter André Miranda and photographer Custodio Coimbra revisited the settings and characters described by the author in his renowned 1938 novel "Vidas Secas." The duo traversed the interior of Alagoas and Pernambuco, stopping in towns linked to Graciliano's journey amid the worst drought in five decades. The trip resulted in a special edition of GLOBO's Prosa & Verso supplement, published in June 2013. The report, which also became an e-book and won the Petrobras Award, revealed the harsh reality that the hardships depicted by Graciliano continued to plague the local population in the 21st century.

Militias were not yet a common topic in the news until March 20, 2005, when O GLOBO published a report that intrigued Rio residents. "Militias of police officers oust drug traffic," read the headline of the article by Vera Araújo, revealing that groups of police and ex-police officers had taken control of 42 favelas in Rio's West Zone. Besides popularizing the term "militias," the work reported on the growth of this new criminal faction, which became one of the main public security issues in the state.

O GLOBO shed light on the grim chapters of the military dictatorship. In 1996, a series of reports revealed details about the Araguaia guerrilla massacre in the 1970s. Unprecedented Army documents showed that many who were killed had been imprisoned before "disappearing." The work won the Esso Journalism Award. In 1999, a report noted that the Public Prosecutor's Office had reopened the case of the Riocentro attack after the initial inquiry masked military involvement in the 1981 episode. Subsequently, the newspaper delved into the case and won another Esso Journalism Award.

By revealing in O GLOBO in July 1992 that a Fiat Elba belonging to then-President Fernando Collor was purchased with a phantom check from businessman Paulo César Farias, journalist Jorge Bastos Moreno (1954-2017) proved the corruption scheme within the government. In September of the same year, Collor resigned from office.

In November 1998, during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's (PSDB) administration at the Palácio do Planalto, the newspaper reported and closely followed the "Cayman Dossier" scandal, a package of forged documents intended to attribute nonexistent crimes to politicians of the ruling party, aiming to harm them in that year's election when the president himself was seeking reelection. Copies were circulated and were allegedly acquired by opposition members. Politicians like Paulo Maluf and Fernando Collor were accused of possessing the dossier. The same documentation was supposedly offered to PT leaders but was declined.

In 1973, O GLOBO was the only newspaper to accompany sertanistas Orlando and Cláudio Villas-Bôas in their first contact with the indigenous people then known as Krain-a-Kore, in Mato Grosso, during the construction of the Cuiabá-Santarém road. On the brink of extinction, the ethnic group, whose true name is Panará, was relocated to the Xingu National Park two years later. In 1996, a series of reports by Ascânio Seleme and Pedro Martinelli, detailing the people's precarious life in the reserve, earned the newspaper the Esso Award for Scientific Information.

By analyzing unofficially compiled data, Felipe Grinberg and Rafael Galdo revealed in 2023 that 2,044 people had been amputated in the past 15 years across the country due to armed violence. "Mutilated" showcased the plight of those injured by firearms and explosives in Rio, which, with 88 victims, became the national capital of mutilations. The series won the Human Rights Journalism Award, presented by the Movement for Justice and Human Rights and the Rio Grande do Sul Bar Association. The photo essay by Márcia Foletto, capturing the victims and showing projectile fragments, won the Photography category.