Grupo de Comunicação Editora Três

Três Publishing appeared in 1972, when Domingo Alzugaray decided to leave Abril Group, after 15 years of work, to found his own publishing company along with Fabrizio Fasano and Luís Carta. Fasano left the partnership in 1973 and Carta in 1976, to found Carta Editorial.

Domingo was born in the city of Victoria, a province of Entre Rios (Argentina) and arrived in Brazil in 1958, to implement the department of fotonovelas in Abril publishing. Two years later, he got married to Cátia Alzugaray, who would work with him in the publishing company, and became a naturalized brazilian citizen in 1966.

The first published title was the collection of O primeiro título publicado foi a coleção de issues of Menu cuisine, followed by the collection of books like Presidents of Brazil, by journalist Helio Silva, that made an impact in newsstands. After that, they published the esoteric magazine Planeta and the masculine magazine Status, which had covers with actresses like Sônia Braga and Xuxa and had among its collaborators the writers Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Jorge Amado.

By the end of the 1970s, Azugaray released th two most important titles of family business that would become, some years later, one single magazine: the Senhor magazine, purchased by Três Publishing from Carta Editorial, and IstóÉ (inspired on the Argentinian EstoÉ), in partnership with Mino Carta, under the publisher Encontro Editorial.

Domingo never invested in other businesses besides the magazines and issues publisher, and the group passed through several financial problems. In 1979, the losses caused by the release of Jornal da República (Republic Newspaper)made the family give up the brand IstoÉ to Unibanco, the creditor bank. So, in 1980, the group’s main title started to be published by Caminho Editoral Ltda., having Fernando Moreira Salles, the son of Unibanco’s owner, Whalter Moreira Salles.

Azugaray managed to buy back the magazine in 1988 and, despite the fiancial difficulties, IstoÉ magazine continues to compete in circulation with two other weekly actuality magazines, Veja (Abril Group) and Época (Globo Group). The competition for readers have always been anchored on the cover images, in exclusive information and denunciations.

Nowadays, Três Publishing has only nine titles, besides the five titles in partnership with the publisher Rocky Mountain, founded by Caco Alzugaray, who also took on the presidency of Três Publishing after Domingo’s death, in 2017. The group’s crisis also reflects in its institutional relations. In 2016, some magazines by the publisher, including IstoÉ, stopped being audited by IVC – Communication Verifying Institute, a non-profit association that audits the circulation of printed vehicles in the country. According to information from the institute, the publication “was excluded from IVC via administrative process”.