Gringo Gazettes

(Page 2 of 4)

Under Richard Dyer, The Tico Times found itself on the front lines of a decades-long fight against obligatory licensing for journalists imposed by the Colegio de Periodistas, a government-sanctioned journalists’ association that required all working journalists in the country to be members, but the colegio prohibited foreign journalists – i.e., English-speaking ones needed for an English-language paper – from applying unless they had completed five years of residency in the country. And, in a quintessentially Costa Rican catch-22, journalists could not apply for residency unless they were members of the colegio. Dyer did battle with the colegio for twenty-three years, and his eventual victory in 1985 – the year the Inter-American Human Rights Court declared the compulsory licensing of journalists a violation of human rights – is the reason foreign journalists are allowed to practice their profession in Costa Rica today. Dyer’s efforts earned him the Inter-American Press Association’s Grand Prize for Press Freedom in 1995.

Fifty years after its founding, The Tico Times prints 20,000 copies weekly and is distributed throughout Costa Rica and the United States, with subscribers in fifty countries. Based out of an old, two-story house in the court district of San José, Costa Rica’s capital, the national weekly has an editorial staff of fourteen and averages fifty-two pages, including national news, with regular business, real estate and opinion sections, a “Weekend” features section, and The Nica Times, an eight-page Nicaraguan publication produced out of Granada, Nicaragua. The Tico Times is the only paid-circulation English-language newspaper in the country, with a local newsstand price of 600 colones (about $1.15).

Tico Times Publisher Dery Dyer attributes the paper’s enduring success simply to “good journalism.”

“We offer an alternative to the Spanish-language press,” she said. “We cover national news with a different perspective.”

Over the years, Dyer, 58, has seen a number of rival publications come and go, though she says none has challenged The Tico Times’ supremacy in terms of reputation and following.

“The competition we’ve had has mainly been for advertising; we’ve never had any trouble with readership,” she said.

While The Tico Times remains Costa Rica’s only national English-language newspaper, distributed countrywide, the competition has multiplied in recent years, largely in response to an explosion of foreign development in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, where no fewer than three English-language newspapers have cropped up in the past four years.

With several international airlines now offering direct flights from the U.S. into Liberia, Guanacaste’s capital, tourists and residents have the option of bypassing the national capital entirely, and the region has become its own nexus of tourism and development.

Home to some of Costa Rica’s most celebrated beaches and the destination of choice for the greater part of the country’s annual 1.6 million tourists, Guanacaste has seen skyrocketing development in recent years. With the Four Seasons entrenched since January 2004, a Hyatt Regency and JW Marriott under construction, and vacation condos sprouting throughout the region, this explosive growth shows no indication of slowing down.

Ralph Nicholson, publisher-editor of The Beach Times, based out of the coastal village of Potrero, likens Guanacaste’s development to the Wild West.