Roberto Civita

Roberto F. Civita (9 August 1936 – 26 May 2013) was a Brazilian businessman and publisher.

Roberto Civita was born on 9 August 1936 in Milan, Italy to Sylvana and Victor Civita, who worked in publishing.

He had a younger brother Richard.

Born in Italy, he emigrated at the age of two with his family to New York in 1938 to escape effects of the Race Laws.

His family moved to New York City in 1938 after passage of the Race Laws in Italy.

They moved again to Brazil in 1949, where his father Victor Civita founded Editora Abril, a publishing house.

In 1949, the family moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where his father, Victor Civita, had founded the Editora Abril, first publishing comic books under license from the Walt Disney Company.

(Donald Duck was the first title, released in 1950).

Civita did his college studies in the United States, beginning with nuclear physics at Rice University, Texas, but gave up the subject when he realized that it was not his calling.

He graduated in journalism from the University of Pennsylvania and got a graduate degree in economics from its Wharton School of Economics.

He also has a degree in sociology from Columbia University, New York City.

During this time, he also worked as a trainee at Time Inc.

He married Leila Francini of Sao Paulo.

The couple had two sons (Giancarlo and Victor Civita Neto) and a daughter together.

In more recent years, he married Maria Antônia Neto

After college and graduate school in the United States, the younger Civita entered the family business in the 1960s.

He helped its expansion and development as Grupo Abril, becoming one of the largest publishing companies in Brazil.

Civita returned to Brazil in the mid-1960s, to assume various positions at Editora Abril and organize a radical change in Brazilian journalism.

He worked to establish a strong reputation for fact checking and an independent press.

In addition, with his participation, Abril launched several major magazine titles for specific markets, such as Quatro Rodas (automotive), Claudia and Manequim (for women), Exame (business), Realidade, and Superinteressante (Science & Culture).

Like other publishers, Civita struggled to maintain press freedom under the long years of the repressive military government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

Some compromises were forced, as the government censored press it did not like.

From the founding in 1968 of the weekly Veja, the flagship of the company, Civita served as its Editor-in-Chief.

Realidade was described as a model for editorial independence.

The Company began to sell magazines through subscription sales rather than depend on newsstands.

Mino Carta, co-founder and former managing editor of Veja (between 1968 and 1976), said that the military government's censorship imposed on the magazine was "very harsh."

It started in 1969 and did not end until 1976, when he resigned (or was fired, according to other sources).

According to Carta, for being deemed an "enemy of the government", the military asked Roberto Civita to fire him.

In exchange, the state bank Caixa Econômica Federal granted the company a loan of US$ 50 million.

Decades later, Civita and Carta appeared to defend their actions related to Veja in the 1970s.

Beginning in 1982 he became president, and took over all operations in 1990.

He became chairman of the Board of Directors and Editorial Head of Grupo Abril.

He has also headed related education foundations and participated in leadership of the Lauder Institute and the Wharton Advisory Board.

In 1982 Civita became president of the Grupo Abril, which had become one of the largest publishers in Brazil.

He was part of the Board of Overseers of the International Center for Economic Growth (founded in 1985 with headquarters in Panama).

He took command of all operations in 1990, after the death of his father Victor.

By his own death, Civita had become a billionaire several times over.

In 2007 Civita said that Veja had no need to "please everyone", even if criticized for purportedly editorializing in its articles about politics.

He also said that he had not made decisions to satisfy advertisers or the government.

In 2007 he said, "We're doing the magazines for readers, not to please advertisers, nor government, nor friends."