The ripple effect of the recession-driven editorial "downsizing" among U.S. media is hitting Brazil's foreign-correspondent community like a tidal wave. Staff positions are changing into part-time stringer slots, and many long-time stringers say their editors are asking them to write less, and less often.

Some are packing up and buying one-way tickets home. If they have to face a tight job market, they figure, it might as well be in familiar environs.

Among the casualties: Time magazine eliminated its Rio de Janeiro bureau, converting a staff position into a "superstringer" slot; Business Week closed its Sao Paulo office and cut a salaried position in favor of free-lance coverage; United Press International, in its continuing saga of retrenchment, also abandoned Sao Paulo.

Veteran correspondents note that television crews, which once descended on South America with some regularity, are seldom seen these days. Paul Knox, Rio de Janeiro correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of the few outlets retaining a stable presence, noted the absence of foreign television at the trial last December of the murderers of Amazon labor leader Chico Mendes.

Industry publications (like Advertising Age and Chemical Week), the bread and butter for many jack-of-all-trades stringers, are nearly unanimous in their quest for fewer words.

Coupled with disappearing jobs and assignments, the fate of the U.S. dollar has provided another "push factor" for departing expatriate journalists. The greenback's 359 percent rise since President Fernando Collor de Mello took office in March 1990 would seem a blessing -- were it not for the period's 553.5 percent inflation rate.

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