because he was born in Italy. Matarazzo financed the purchase of new, modern printing presses and saw the investment as a way to respond to the attacks he suffered from newspapers owned by his business rival Assis Chateaubriand. One of the weapons he developed for this battle was reducing the sales price of the Folhas in order to suffocate the business of Diários Associados, Chateaubriand's company. However, the ploy backfired. Nabantino Ramos balanced those losses against the Count's initial financing and, some months later, declared that the company's debt to Matarazzo was fully paid and took over editorial control of the papers. The middle classes' newspaper, and civil activism Nabantino Ramos, who was an attorney, was very interested in modern managerial techniques, and during the 1940s and 1950s adopted several innovations: competitive examinations for new hires, journalism courses, performance bonuses, fact checking. He wrote a newsroom manual and editorial policy guidelines. In 1949, Ramos started a third newspaper, Folha da Tarde, and sponsored dozens of civic campaigns against corruption and organized crime, for the defense of water sources, infrastructure improvements, city works, and plenty more. However organized as an executive, Ramos lacked business acumen and was not flexible enough to negotiate credit lines and balance budgets. In the early 1960s, the company was suffering due to a rise in the prices of printing paper. The three newspapers were merged under a new title, Folha de S.Paulo, in 1960, but initially the morning, afternoon and evening editions were kept. However, with a worsening financial situation, only the morning edition survived. Things deteriorated further in 1961, after the news staff organized a strike that forced the company to pay higher wages and grant them additional benefits. That meant additional costs for the paper. On 13 August 1962, the company was sold to entrepreneurs Octavio Frias de Oliveira and Carlos Caldeira Filho. Pluralism and leadership Frias and Caldeira became, respectively, CEO and COO of the company, and started their tenure by seeking to balance the newspaper's financial position. Frias chose scientist José Reis, one of the leading lights in the Brazilian Association for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), as newsroom head, and also hired Cláudio Abramo, the journalist credited with the successful updating of rival "O Estado de S. Paulo". Abramo would take Reis' place and form a productive working partnership with Frias that extended for more than 20 years. In 1964, Folha