You are Mariana Setúbal-Vieira, 49, Digital Managing Director at Diário do Brasil, a 102-year-old São Paulo newspaper group. The board has given you 90 days to propose how the digital business and the print business will live together. The headline: digital must reach EBITDA breakeven in 18 months without breaking print.
The situation
Diário do Brasil prints six days a week, circulates 218,000 copies, and serves a print-advertising base that still funds 78% of the firm's revenue. Print revenue is R$420M, declining 6% per year. Operating margin in print is +14%. Digital revenue is R$48M, growing 38% per year — subscription-led, with a small but profitable verticals business (financial data, classifieds-replacement). Digital operating margin: −22%, narrowing.
The 412-person newsroom is unified. The digital team — 38 people — sits inside the newsroom org but reports dotted-line to you and solid-line to the Editor-in-Chief, Henrique Mascarenhas-Brandão, who has held the role for 18 years. Henrique is publicly supportive of digital and privately skeptical that "online subscribers" are a real business. The board wants a structural decision before the AGM in 11 weeks.