Cícero Augusto Ribeiro Sandroni (born February 26, 1935) is a Brazilian journalist.
Early life
Sandroniwas born in the city of São Paulo, on February 26, 1935, the son of Ranieri Sandroni and Alzira Ribeiro Sandroni (both born in Guaxupé, Minas Gerais). He did his primary studies and part of junior high school in São Paulo. After his family moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1946, he completed his secondary studies there. He studied at the Faculty of Journalism (now Communication) at the Pontifical Catholic University and EBAP - Brazilian School of Public Administration, at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, where he was a fellow.
Work
In 1954 he did his first internships in newspaper newsrooms, initially at Tribuna da Imprensa, under Carlos Lacerda, and then at Correio da Manhã, under the direction of Antônio Callado and Luiz Alberto Bahia, where he became head of reporting. Invited by Odylo Costa, he joined the editorial staff of Jornal do Brasil, at the time of the editorial reform of the newspaper, and at the same time he worked at Rádio Jornal do Brasil. In July 1958 he moved to O Globo where, selected for foreign policy coverage, he made several international trips, including to Chile to cover the Extraordinary Conference of American Chancellors, and to the United States, where he was invited by the US State Department and sent by O Globo to write about Nikita Khrushchev's first visit to the UN. On the same occasion, he interviewed Alexander Kerensky, then at the Hoover Institute in Stanford University, in California. He also participated events at the university honoring the poet Cecília Meireles.
In April 1960, he joined the O Globo team, which, headed by Mauro Salles, covered the inauguration of the new capital Brasília. That same year he took over as head of political reporting for Diário de Notícias, then under the direction of Prudente de Morais, where he wrote the column “Political Notes”, replacing Heráclio Salles. Invited by José Aparecido de Oliveira and by the mayor of Brasilia, Paulo de Tarso Santos, in 1961 he moved to the new capital, where he was Press Secretary of the Prefecture of the Federal District, and also director of Public Relations at Novacap. At the same time, alongside José Aparecido, he coordinated the team, led by Candido Mendes de Almeida, that prepared the first (and only) address from President Jânio Quadros to the National Congress. He was a member of the Fiscal Council of the Cultural Foundation of Brasília, chaired by Ferreira Gullar, alongside then deputy José Sarney.
In the parliamentary government of João Goulart / Tancredo Neves, he was deputy head of the cabinet of Minister Franco Montoro, in the portfolio of Labor and Social Security and in 1962 he was appointed government representative in the Fiscal Council of the Institute of Retirement and Pensions of Maritime (IAPM), being that same year elected president of the organ, from which he was dismissed in April 1964. With the installation of the military regime, he returned to work at the Tribuna da Imprensa of Hélio Fernandes, and at O Cruzeiro, under the direction of Odylo Costa. With Odylo, Álvaro Pacheco and the diplomat Pedro Penner da Cunha, he acquired a printing press, from whose machines came the first two editions of the literary magazine Ficção, edited with the collaboration of Antônio Olinto and Roberto Seljan Braga. Then, with Pedro Penner da Cunha, he founded Edinova, a pioneer publication in Brazil that took in Latin American literature and the French roman nouveau.
In 1965 he participated in a conference of journalists in Bonn, Germany, which resulted in the creation of the international news agency Interpress Service, of which he was director in Brazil. That same year he returned to Correio da Manhã, where he wrote the daily column “Quatro Cantos!”, in opposition to the military government, and worked alongside Otto Maria Carpeaux, Franklin de Oliveira, Paulo Francis, José Lino Grünewald, Osvaldo Peralva and Newton Rodrigues. Alceu Amoroso Lima praised his work in an article published in the Jornal do Brasil around this time. With the censorship imposed on the press after Institutional Act nº 5, he left daily journalism and joined Bloch Editores, where he was editor-in-chief of the magazines Fatos e Fotos, Manchete and Tendência. Under his leadership, the latter received, in 1974, the Esso Journalism Award, in the category of Best Contribution to the Press.