On Saturday, the 11th, the Mural project reconvened in Folha de São Paulo's training room.

The biggest daily newspaper in Brazil once again hosted a group of reporters from peripheral communities of São Paulo.

A total of 24 participants were selected. The profile ranged from bloggers, community organizers, journalists and students. All of them from peripheral communities and shanty towns in the Greater São Paulo area.

The eagerness of this group to engage in these discussions about their day to day became clear from the earliest hour.

As usual, we started the day by looking into the day's newspapers and checking what - if anything - had been covered about communities on the outskirts of São Paulo.

There were few stories, as the students quickly pointed out, apart from the usual police themed headline. That lead to a very productive, if heated, debate.

Our discussion, as student Cleber Arruda accurately pointed out in a post he wrote for the Mural blog, talked about all the constructive things that are taking place in their communities, but that are sidelined by the mainstream media.

Cleber also recalled another heated discussion on a ''Catch 22'' dilemma that we see on an almost daily basis on the country's newspapers.

Is the coverage on communities outside of the more affluent parts of the city somewhat monothematic due to a lack of readers in peripheral communities?

Or is there a lack of coverage because most of the readers of the mainstream media come from middle class boroughs?

If we add to this supply and demand issue bits of bias, prejudice and, last but not least, laziness, and accommodation, we end up with a very nasty combination that has lead to the current scenario.

Cleber points out that it's as if editors of the big publications asked themselves if it would be worth it to think outside the mold, if the subjects portrayed in such stories are not even likely to read them. And if the ones who do read their papers do not identify with such livelihoods or would rather carry on seeing such communities as safe havens for crime and violence.

How can we work ourselves of this trap? By acknowledging that the emergence of millions of people out of extreme poverty is likely to have an influence in the news cycle and the news coverage as well.

That many of the São Paulo inhabitants currently being stigmatized by the city's publications have an increasing will to be heard and to express themselves.

Of course, the lack of cultural foundations and the deficiencies in the educational system faced by several people in outlying communities does them no favors.

But with the social transformations already taking course, certainly more is to come.

Mural, its participants have realized that a true change is going to come, not made possible by politicians, but by inhabitants taking their fates in their own hands.

The time is now to make the best of this wave of change.