Martina Guzman

Martina Guzmán is the founder of VERDAD: Verifying and Exposing Radio Disinformation and Discourse, an AI tool that helps journalists track and investigate misinformation on Spanish-language and ethnic radio stations across the United States. A 2023 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, she also founded and directs the Democracy Media Lab at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan.

She has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of race, community, and media. Martina has trained journalists across the U.S. on how to report with and not just about communities. As an award-winning independent journalist and documentary filmmaker, Martina covers race, justice, and systemic inequality.

Her work has appeared on NPR, The Guardian, Slate, PBS, and Next City, among other notable outlets. She served as the Detroit correspondent for The Takeaway, a radio news program produced by Public Radio International, The New York Times, and WNYC. During her time at WDET, Detroit's NPR affiliate, her community-focused reporting earned her the Best Statewide Individual Reporter award from the Associated Press.

Martina's coverage of global, post-industrial cities, including the Detroit-Berlin Connection, garnered the Best Investigative Series award from the Associated Press and the Michigan Broadcasters. She has received multiple grants and reporting fellowships, including those from the MacArthur Foundation, the Reynolds Journalism Institute, and the German Marshall Fund, as well as a Ford Foundation reporting grant to examine the impact of water shut-offs on Black women in Detroit and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Martina is a lifelong Detroiter. She is the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants and a graduate of the Journalism School at Columbia University in New York City.