About Us
The Voice of Guanacaste is Costa Rica’s first non-profit bilingual newspaper, and the only hyperlocal media outlet with an investigative and fact-checking unit in the country. For more than 10 years, we’ve been doing ethical, participatory, quality journalism in the province to provide timely access to relevant content and unite communities to help them develop. We’ve done investigative reports on resilience and climate change, coastal development and gentrification, violence against women, immigration and labor exploitation, culture, and public funds.
Every day, a team of journalists, editors, designers and professional photographers keep our readers informed with professional, quality content, always hand in hand with the support of our community networks. Together with them, we denounce what’s wrong, we discover who is responsible and, above all, we connect communities from all corners of the region and draw attention to them.
The Voice of Guanacaste began in 2002 as The Voice of Nosara and rather than a newspaper, it was a printed newsletter with local news. In 2006, John S. Johnson and his wife, Susan Johnson (U.S. citizens in love with Costa Rica who believe in the importance of local information), acquired the newspaper in order to continue the project, since it was about to close down. Starting in 2010, in response to our readers’ requests, we also began publishing news from the neighboring communities of Nosara.
Thanks to support from local businesses, financing from the Johnsons and the unwavering following of our readers, the newspaper grew and in 2013, we became The Voice of Guanacaste, branching out to provide useful information to communities throughout the province.
With the aim of maintaining editorial integrity and independence, in 2015, The Voice of Guanacaste became a non-profit association. You can read more about how we’re funded here, and about who owns The Voice here.
In the last five years, we’ve earned several national and international awards. In 2020, we won the Jorge Vargas Gené/Óscar Cordero National Award for our binational, cross-border investigative reporting on “The Drawn Border.” We also received an honorable mention in the 2018 Pío Víquez National Prize for Journalism, and first place in the Ángela Acuña Braun National Prize for Gender Equality and Equity. In 2017, we took second place in the Social Innovation category at the VIVA Schmidheiny Awards. In addition, together with other Latin American media, we also won the 2020 Ortega and Gasset international award for the best journalistic investigation with the collaborative journalistic work “Transnationals of Faith” and we earned the 2020 Fetisov Journalism Awards international prize in the category of Contribution to Civil Rights for another collaborative report, “Migrants from Another World.”
With our different projects, we’ve trained more than 100 people in access to public information and journalistic and citizen coverage of local problems. In 2022, more than 500,000 people read our articles and we published more than 110 stories, 38% of which were about communities and service, 11% about human rights, 20% about electoral politics, 10% about cultural identity and 21% about a variety of other topics.
Investigative Work
The Voice of Guanacaste is the only regional media outlet in Costa Rica that does data-based investigative journalism on human rights.
Applications:
Vision
To become a benchmark in Guanacaste by fostering progress in communities through responsible and innovative journalism.
Mission
We produce ethical, participatory and quality journalism with a commitment to uniting and providing exposure to communities to promote their development.
What communities do we represent today?
We currently cover news from Santa Cruz, Tamarindo, Nosara, Sámara, Nicoya, Hojancha and Liberia. We also maintain a presence in Carrillo, Nandayure, La Cruz, Bagaces and Cañas. Our goal is to actively cover the entire province of Guanacaste by 2020.
Awards:
In the last five years, we’ve earned several national and international awards. In 2020, we won the Jorge Vargas Gené/Óscar Cordero National Award for our binational, cross-border investigative reporting on “The Drawn Border.” We also received an honorable mention in the 2018 Pío Víquez National Prize for Journalism, and first place in the Ángela Acuña Braun National Prize for Gender Equality and Equity. In 2017, we took second place in the Social Innovation category at the VIVA Schmidheiny Awards. In addition, together with other Latin American media, we also won the 2020 Ortega and Gasset international award for the best journalistic investigation with the collaborative journalistic work “Transnationals of Faith” and we earned the 2020 Fetisov Journalism Awards international prize in the category of Contribution to Civil Rights for another collaborative report, “Migrants from Another World.”
Other recognitions:
- Two honorable mentions from Amcham for investigative reporting on the Tempisque and on Guanacaste’s garbage.
- Etecom Latin America Award for reporting by Bernardo Montes de Oca for The Voice of Guanacaste in the article “Can President Solís Save Guanacaste from Drought?”
Alliances:
The Voice of Guanacaste believes in the power of collaboration to bring about change and lasting impacts in communities. For more than five years, we’ve been part of collaborative investigations such as the Panama and Paradise Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “Transnationals of Faith” and “Migrants from Another World” by the Latin American Center for Journalistic Investigation, and The New Paths of Central American Migration by Otras Miradas. We’ve also established our own alliances, creating collaborative projects with Interferencia de Radios UCR and Nicas Migrantes from Confidencial de Nicaragua. With these two media outlets, we published “The Labyrinth of Exploiting Labor,” “Growing up Without Papers” and “The Drawn Border.” Along with Semanario Universidad, we also published the investigative report “Dying Under the Sun” about the epidemic of chronic kidney disease.
Scholarships:
International organizations trust more and more in our work. These are just some of the entities that have granted non-refundable funds to The Voice of Guanacaste to develop journalistic innovation, investigation and data-based projects:
- Google News Initiatives helped us strengthen our GuanaData project with funds for technology, innovation and sustainability. With this scholarship, we developed a journalistic tool that detects possible cases of corruption in public purchases in six municipalities of Guanacaste. This project is in the research phase.
- The Canada Fund for Local Initiatives awarded us funds to carry out an augmented reality project on the emotional burden suffered by housewives. We were also the beneficiaries of funds from them for the special report on “The New Paths of Central American Migration.”
- Oxfam supported developing and formalizing Otras Miradas through The Voice of Guanacaste, which administered the funds and was part of the process to strengthen this Central American organization.
- The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) granted us funds to put together an edition of GuanaData, a project aimed at increasing the transparency of municipalities by analyzing budgets and their execution, and leading community workshops on access to public information. ICFJ also gave us the initial support to put together the first Nosara newsletters, a hyperlocal, bilingual newsletter for the community where The Voice got started.
- Thanks to a grant from the Trust for the Americas foundation, we developed the first editions of GuanaData and launched The Voice Fact Checking public speech verification project. With The Voice Fact Checking, we verify public speeches by mayors, council members and district representatives.
We’ve won the Ministry of Culture’s Points of Culture and Workshop Scholarships to launch several projects on Guanacaste’s identity, such as “Historias de camino” (Stories Along the Way).
Collaborators
Our editorial team
Ernesto Rivera- Executive Director
Noelia Esquivel Solano - Editor
José Pablo Román - Journalist
César Arroyo Castro- Photo Editor
Roberto Cruz Alpízar- Graphic Producer
Rubén Román - Audience Coordinator
Our commercial team
Jennifer Vega - Commercial Manager
Margarita Quesada Ortega - Assistant
Our Board of Directors
Secretary- John S. Johnson. John S. Johnson is founder and chairman of Harmony Labs. He is also founder of Eyebeam, a studio for collaborative experiments with technology and art, Screenwriters Colony, a retreat and workshop for emerging media writers, and the Almanack Arts Colony, a multi-disciplinary artist retreat. Johnson also co-founded BuzzFeed and was a founding investor in the Huffington Post. He has written, produced, and directed two feature films, Without a Trace: June 10, 1979 (1991), and Ratchet (1996). In 2003, Johnson was a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Most recently he received a master’s degree in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from Columbia University.
Treasurer– Mercedes Agüero R. Graduated from the School of Communication, UCR Mercedes worked for 22 years for Grupo Nación where she worked as a journalist in the area of public services, telecommunications, economics, politics and in the last four years she was part of the Data Intelligence and Research. She is currently chief editor of the morning news section at SINART TV.
Fiscal- Giannina Segnini is a Costa Rican journalist who has won several international awards for her work at La Nación and on independent investigations. Segnini specializes in investigative and data journalism, and currently teaches at Columbia University’s journalism program in New York. Segnini provides crucial support for our investigations.
Vocal- Diego Delfino is Costa Rican journalist and writer Diego Delfino is widely known as director of the website delfino.cr and for his work as editor-in-chief of the magazine Su Casa.
Vocal- Steve Mack Attorney and editor from the United States. He worked for The Tico Times for several years. Mack lives in Costa Rica and is director of the nongovernmental organization Guanacaste Community Fund (Fondo Comunitario de Guanacaste), which seeks to connect financial resources with human resources. Mack will help us during our first steps as an NGO.
Associates
Ethel Araya Chavez Graduated as an economist from the UCR, she is currently the Manager of Community Projection and Sustainability for Harmony Projects in Nosara where she coordinates various initiatives and supports local organizations. Ethel is part of the Board of Directors of the Nosara Civic Association, the Nosara Recycling Association and member of the Hojancha-Nicoya and Nandayure Territorial Council of INDER.
Alejandro Fernández Sanabria. He worked in the research unit with data in Univision Noticias and for digital media Injustice Watch. He holds a master’s degree in public policy analysis from the University of Chicago and is a lawyer graduated from the UCR. He co-founded the first political fact-checking platform in Spanish in Central America and the US. He worked in the weekly El Financiero (Costa Rica), where he won a Data Journalism Award (2015) and obtained an honorable mention of the Pío Víquez National Journalism Prize (2018).
Hulda Miranda
Journalist and editor for the investigation unit of national newspaper Semanario Universidad. Graduated from UCR where she currently studies law. She worked for La Nación mostly covering judicial news.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Hulda Miranda Picado
She is a journalist and research editor at the newspaper Semanario Universidad. She graduated from the University of Costa Rica where she also currently studies Law. Hulda worked for several years in the newspaper La Nación, mainly covering the judicial field of the country.
Hassel Fallas
Editor and journalist dedicated to the management of digital projects based on investigative journalism, database analysis and visualization. Consultant and teacher in Latin America, United States, Spain and South Africa. She directs the Data Analysis workshop for Latin American journalists, as well as the storytelling and data visualization course of the Digital Journalism Training Center of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Hassel directed the Data Intelligence Unit of La Nación, Costa Rica.
Álvaro Murillo Murillo:
Álvaro Murillo Murillo works as journalist for the Semanario Universidad and a frequent contributor to El País and Deutshe Welle newspapers. He worked for La Nación for 15 years. Álvaro obtained his studies in Communication at the University of Costa Rica. He also completed a master's degree in International Relations at the Ortega y Gasset Institute, and obtained a master's degree in Journalism from the joint program of the University of Barcelona and the University of Columbia. He has also worked as a journalism professor at the University of Costa Rica and the Universidad Latina.
Alejandra Vargas Morera
Scientific and environmental journalist, she has interviewed more than 40 Nobel prizes, was editor of Univision Planeta and editor of Science, Health, Art and Technology in Aldea Global magazine. Alejandra has received awards and scholarships from organizations with international recognition such as the Poynter Institute of Journalism, the Knight Center and the New Journalism Foundation, among others. She won the National Prize of Scientific Journalism in Costa Rica and is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Natural Resources Management with an emphasis in Environmental Management. She received the Ortega y Gassett 2017 prize and the Robert F. Kennedy 2017 prize. She is the founder and ambassador of Chicas Poderosas.
FINANCIAL AND MARKETING ADVOSORY COMMITTEE
Diego Martínez
Is co-founder of Loud Digital Consulting, which works on training and executing digital strategy for brands in Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama and Ecuador. He directs the Digital Marketing program of the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (TEC), as well as trainer of the CICAP of the UCR, Chamber of Industries and Chamber of Commerce of Costa Rica. He has a master's degree in Digital Marketing and E-Commerce from the University of Barcelona.
Fernando Arce
Is the founder of Storytellers ST and is currently working in consulting on creative strategy and experience design. Fernando has more than 8 years of experience working with start-ups, social innovation and business growth in Latin America. He runs the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) in Costa Rica and is co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of ASECRI (Association of Entrepreneurs of Costa Rica), Ideas en Acción and the Dress Your Rights Foundation. He directed I Entrepreneur for more than 4 years and is an international speaker. He is also the president of the San José Hub of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.
Alejandro Egea Alfaro
Co-founder of HALO CEO-on-demand, Alejandro specializes in leading processes of growth, transformation and strategic- operational consolidation in private and social organizations. Passionate about solving team challenges that produce a sustainable economic and social impact; through strategic planning with an innovative approach, constant learning and a high component of personal and professional growth.
LEGAL ADVISORY
José Miguel Alfaro
Is founder of the legal firm SEED that focuses on providing advice to small business, startups, social companies and non-governmental organizations. SEED has been providing legal advice in a pro-bono way to La Voz during 2019. Jose Miguel coordinates legal matters oriented to social and eco-friendly businesses in corporate matters, transactions, hiring, litigation, intellectual property, migration and real estate.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND GENDER EQUALITY
Cynthia Castro Villalobos
Co Founder of Boomerang Effect. Businesswoman, psychologist and activist for gender equality and sustainable human development. Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. Consultant for UN Women. International speaker for World Economic Forum, Youth Forum Switzerland, Tedxllorentewomen, TedxPuraVidaJoven, Voces Vitales Centroamérica, among others. Vice President of the Fruktus Foundation and member of the CRUSA Foundation, CINDE, Ideas en Acción and the Social Innovation Board of the Government of Costa Rica 2014-2018. She was a partner and director of RBA, Executive Director of the ALAS Association, Arcus Recruitment Manager and professor at the Universidad Latina.
Lauren Díaz Arias
Is from the county of Tilarán, Guanacaste. Founder and executive director of the Nueva Oportunidad Foundation, an organization that designs integral procedure for the social reinsertion of inmates in society. She has studies in administration, law, criminology, human security and legal-criminal sociology, as well as a specialization in innovation and is currently pursuing an international certification in Project Management focused on development projects. She teaches at the School of Administration of the National University. In 2013, she was selected by the IDB as one of the most innovative young people in Latin America. Lauren is Ashoka Fellow, certified integral coach and Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum.
Contact Us
Correo: [email protected]
Editorial: [email protected]
