Havana Times was founded in 2008 by Circles Robinson, an American who had worked as a translator and journalist in Cuba, with the stated aim of publishing writing from Cubans themselves rather than about them. The site runs parallel English and Spanish editions and is edited from Nicaragua, while most of its regular contributors live in Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. It cooperates with the Nicaraguan weekly Confidencial, where Robinson is a columnist, and operates on reader donations rather than advertising or an owner. Today, Havana Times is mainly focused on daily life and politics in Cuba, covering blackouts, food and medicine shortages, economic reform, emigration and political prosecutions, with additional sections on Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile and the wider region, plus first-person diaries, photo features and republished material from 14ymedio and Democracy Now, from their editorial base in Managua, Nicaragua. One interesting fact: the site runs an annual reader photo contest, now in its fifteenth edition, and its Photo of the Day section is filled entirely by images submitted by readers, which has become one of the few places where amateur photographers inside Cuba can publish work internationally.