In Portugal, Two Major Newspapers, One Daily, One Weekly, Were Properly Prepared for the Day

In Portugal, two major newspapers, one daily, one weekly, were properly prepared for the day. From the weekly newspaper ("Expresso"), one of the most influential newspapers in .pt, we had a journalist and a photographer accompanying the CERN's Portuguese Teachers Program in the 1st week of September, and during that week they interviewed Robert Aymar and Rolf-Dieter Heuer, and took photographs of CMS underground. These lucky issues reflected on two stories 2-pages long in two consecutive weekly editions (one before the 10th, one after the 10th), with a square call-out in the front page. "Expresso" claims to reach about 700 000 readers (from ~130 000 printed paid editions). From the daily newspaper ("Publico"), one of the most important daily newspapers (with ~42 000 printed paid editions), the journalist was properly accredited at CERN for the day (Clara Barata), and made two reports, one on the day (before the event, naturally), one on the following day, with a nice photo on the front page. Publico also maintainted a blog on the day, which had at the end of the day over 180 comments. Although many were rubbish, some 20% were proper questions, that were informally answered by our .pt colleagues at CERN.

Expresso prepared in the last minute a page with credits to CERN, in which they embedded the video feed from CERN (via our national scientific network headquarters), to animate and drive an open debate. All "decent" questions were forwarded to me, which have distributed among my colleagues at LIP, and then provided back the answers. The "Expresso" page was visited some 5800 times, and it seems that the video feed from CERN was seen/downloaded by ~3300 times.

Two other newspapers were more or less prepared for the day, and reacted accordingly, after interviewing .pt researchers from LIP. In particular, one is an economic newspaper (economics daily and economics weekly), the other is a major daily newspaper in the North of .pt (with 107 000 printed paid editions).

But most important is that, mostly due to pressure from inside and from outside, other news channels woke up on the days before, and our National television open channel prepared some reports from CERN (since Sept. 4th), that were broadcasted on the day before in the tv news prime time, and prepared news that made the open news event of the day in tv news programs.

A cable tv much influential news channel (our .pt "CNN" - Sic Notícias) invited researchers to speak live on the news at 9 pm and at 10 pm. On a program joint with "Expresso", they again invited a portuguese researcher.

So, and I apolodgize for this long report, the conclusion is that I'm convinced we touched +50% of the portuguese population, that is +5 000 000 persons. We would not have such a big news hit if it were not for the added pressure and help from the CERN side.

Some days after the event, it remains a much enlarged network of contacts with the press, the radios, the tv channels, etc. And now I hope that in the near future they'll look twice to the mails preparing them for news to come.

I hope I can meet some of you at the CERN's EPPOG meeting next October 3rd+4th, and I hope to hear news about how the meeting next week had done.

I also would like to know if there will be a report to Council tomorrow, and the status of the "exhibition on the road". Could James pls let me know in which scope is the touring of the exhibition being planned? I know it is foreseen to start in Geneva 2009, for the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the U.Gva., but I don't know for how long will it stay, or where will go next? Also what would most likely be the total costs for a country to transport the exhibition mount it, etc