This resource is part of our Exiled Media Toolkit, produced in partnership with the Network of Exiled Media Outlets (NEMO), and with the generous support of the Joyce Barnathan Emergency Fund for Journalists.
In the past five years, Nicaragua has experienced a massive exodus of citizens due to a political crisis that has no end in sight. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled violence, poverty, and government harassment in that short amount of time.
Based on data from the United Nations, researchers such as Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, estimate that roughly 22% of the population of Nicaragua, a nation of 6.8 million people, lives abroad today.
The large displacement that the political crisis has caused doesn’t just have serious social, economic, and political implications for Nicaragua. It also changes information needs, both for those who have fled abroad and people who remained in the country.
Confidencial, an independent Nicaraguan media outlet based in exile in Costa Rica, has found that their website traffic from the U.S., Costa Rica, and Spain – all countries where Nicaraguan migrant communities have settled for decades – has grown significantly. Readership among people still in Nicaragua has also grown, as citizens have sought out reliable information amid the censorship that the Daniel Ortega administration has aimed to impose.
Serving these two communities – diaspora and home country audiences – poses a double challenge for exiled media organizations. How do you stay relevant to both? Do you have the bandwidth to do so? Ideally, there should be an honest and open conversation about the operational capacity and editorial priorities to achieve any strategy to serve these audiences.
Here is how we at CONFIDENCIAL, a member of the Network of Exiled Media Outlets (NEMO), have responded to the information needs of Nicaraguans who discovered our brand because of the political crisis, and those who were already consuming our content but had to leave the country – just as we did as media professionals – in search of safety.
How to serve your audiences abroad
Take off your journalist hat and think of yourself as a citizen living abroad
As a journalist in exile, you are also a migrant. You know the struggles of settling in a new country.
Ask yourself: what information did you wish you had when starting your integration or naturalization process? What topics do you discuss with friends and acquaintances? Are you consuming the news, and do you see your community reflected in that coverage?
When in 2015 Nicaraguan journalist Cindy Regidor moved to Costa Rica, she noticed that there was little media coverage of the Nicaraguan migrant community in her new country. The daily lives of migrants weren’t reflected in the news, nor was analysis of their struggles or reporting on their contributions to society being published.
This didn’t make sense, Regidor recalled, especially considering that Nicaraguans make up 10% of the population in Costa Rica. By the end of 2023, remittances represented about 30% of Nicaragua’s GDP, 20% of which came from Costa Rica.
To connect with this audience, Regidor pitched a new product for Confidencial: a multimedia section on the website that would amplify the voices of Nicaraguan migrants. The idea was well-received by the editors, and Regidor launched Nicas Migrantes in 2021.
The new section was introduced in a moment of news fatigue due to coverage of COVID-19 and the political crisis in Nicaragua. Nicas Migrantes has taken a holistic approach to its editorial agenda, as a result: in addition to in-depth investigations on human rights, it offers advice columns on immigration processes, as well as stories about entrepreneurship, culture and food.
Nicas Migrantes has proven popular among Confidencial’s audience in the years since it launched. “The fact that we made an additional effort – in the middle of a critical situation, trying to survive in exile – to provide a service for the Nicaraguan migrant community, is something to be proud of,” said Regidor. “We are doing a more humane coverage of these communities, with a team that is known for developing in-depth stories that provide a lot of context for readers, as well as proper analysis of statistics.”
Build virtual communities
In the past five years, we at Confidencial have discovered that virtual events offer our audience chances to ask questions and discuss issues they may be afraid to address in person. The risks of doing so, for instance, at family gatherings or in the workplace, are too high, given the fact that the Ortega government harasses and persecutes anyone, including relatives, who challenge the regime’s official narrative.
Amid these circumstances, creating a virtual community that prioritizes safety and debate is crucial for the following reasons:
It builds bridges between home-country audiences and the diaspora. In the beginning of Nicaragua’s political crisis, there was a debate about the “bravery” of people who stayed in the country and the “cowardice” of those who left. Virtual events can help fight this narrative, in this case by bringing in-country and diaspora communities together to discuss and better understand one another.
It promotes engagement and helps the newsroom identify stories. During a webinar organized for the launch of Nicas Migrantes, we invited prominent Nicaraguan personalities to discuss their immigration experiences. Around 600 people joined the conversation and shared their thoughts on the topic; the engagement was one of our highest on record. After the event, Nicas Migrantes was able to identify potential sources among the attendees, and developed news coverage from these points of contact.
You’ll stay relevant among your audiences. By taking requests from your audiences and transforming them into products and initiatives to address their needs, you can foster a growing number of “brand lovers.” These readers will not only be eager to participate in your virtual or in-person events, but they will also recommend them to their relatives, friends, and colleagues. Is there anything more effective than word of mouth, after all?
How to serve audiences who remain in your home country
Staying relevant to home-country audiences while being away from their daily problems and challenges is a tricky goal for exiled media outlets to achieve. Confidencial Director Carlos Fernando Chamorro shared a few tips on the matter in a lecture at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in March 2023:
Develop a strategy to cultivate sources
In Nicaragua, there’s a thirst for knowledge about what’s happening inside the regime. You will be able to provide this kind of information if you have a strong relationship with reliable sources from within the government and other key sectors. Many of these sources may want to remain anonymous, however: you will need to diligently verify and corroborate the information you receive from them.
Expand your capacity for observation and reporting through a network of collaborators in your home country
This is probably one of the most important long-term strategies for an exiled media outlet. If you are based abroad, you need someone you trust who can be your eyes and ears inside the country you’re covering.
It is also important to dedicate resources to monitor and fact-check the vast amounts of information and multimedia content circulating on social media. Your journalists and social media team must receive training to do this effectively.
“Social media represents an extraordinary vehicle for overcoming censorship, but it has also become a space for disinformation and political polarization that competes against the independent press,” warned Chamorro.
Pursue innovation in online and offline platforms
This is hard to accomplish from exile: sit down with your team to define what innovation means for you, and how you would like to transform that. Doing so effectively will help you better counteract government propaganda and viral misinformation on social media.
At Confidencial, we wanted to offer products that would help citizens exercise their political freedoms. That’s why we created a political compass test which helps achieve just that, but in a safe, private and fun way.
Join forces with other media outlets from your country, your region, or globally.
This will help you provide high-quality information for readers who need to better understand the environment they live in.
For example, thanks to Regidor’s leadership, Confidencial has partnered with two Costa Rican outlets to publish investigations on human rights, and organize community-building initiatives in towns along the San Juan River, the natural border where Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans coexist with one another.
No matter what initiatives you decide to implement, always keep in mind that to serve your audiences you have to put yourself in their shoes. While journalists usually set the editorial agenda, content should always respond to the needs of those who make your media outlet possible: your readers.
Cinthia Membreño is the coordinator of the Network of Exiled Media Outlet (NEMO) and previously served as Audience Loyalty Manager at Confidencial, a Nicaraguan exiled media outlet based in Costa Rica since 2019.