Even unexpectedly, news stories can become a game. The TV show Fantástico, a weekly variety show with dramaturgy, humor sketches and journalism that airs every Sunday night in Brasil on TV Globo, ran a story about how a singer called Belchior, very popular in the 1970s, had vanished for months.

The arm of Globo?s journalism online, G1, ran the story (originally produced for the TV show) in digital form (sorry, link in portuguese). They transcribed part of the text from the video and it was online a few hours after it was seen on television. Immediately, readers from every part of the country started to send information about Belchior sightings. They had photos, stories and dates. “We didn?t expect that”, says Renato Franzini, executive-editor of G1. “In the morning, we had many messages telling us about sightings of the singer. We decided to put it all together and make it a new developing story.”

The editorial team made a map where it was possible to pinpoint a sighting and the date Belchior was seen there. This is an example of a challenge that was established for the audience (find Belchior) even though nobody in the TV show or the website, asked for the help of the audience. It emerged naturally. People started to post videos on You Tube parodying Britney Spears while Fantástico kept promoting the story with other artists talking about the singer.

The news story became suddenly something that looked a lot like an Alternate Reality Game. And people even started to think that it was some kind of promotion or viral.

After one week, the TV show ran a story showing that they had found the singer in a cabin in Uruguai, ending the search. The way the show handled the highly anticipated finding of the singer was an anticlimax at best, but the original concept is too good to be ignored. The mix of crowd sourced journalism and ARG is a very interesting tool in the new cross over between social media tools and media outlets.