Gringo Gazettes

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With an editorial staff of seven, The Journal publishes national and international news stories, with about 50 percent of its editorial content coming from newswire material.

Kozak, 26, says The Journal targets foreign residents and investors, high-end tourists and the Costa Rican business community, and that its role is to “promote Costa Rica and more importantly Guanacaste as a world tourism destination.” Asked if this objective, and the interests of The Journal’s developer investors, are at odds with a newspaper’s function of providing unbiased coverage, Kozak responded that recent editions have been “particularly filled with stories telling about rising crime, illegal construction, etc. in Guanacaste and in Costa Rica generally.”

“You may be about to decide whether to purchase a condo in Jacó, Tamarindo or in the Papagayo area. You read The Journal, and you make a decision,” Kozak said. “We certainly do not pretend that all is rosy and that Costa Rica is a flawless paradise on Earth.”

While the gringo settlement of Costa Rica may have driven the recent upsurge of English-language news publications in the country, the future of the market may ultimately be dictated by ticos, as Costa Ricans call themselves.

In response to booming tourism and investment and a growing market of well-paying jobs with multinational corporations such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Hospira, more and more Costa Ricans are learning, speaking, and wanting to read English.

“We have more and more tico readers, so English is definitely the growing language,” The Tico Times’ Dyer said.

That in mind, the next serious contender in Costa Rica’s English-language news market could be a paper written by ticos for ticos, leaving expat journalists with

nothing to write but postcards to our families.