Freelancers, Travel and The New York Times

A number of freelance travel writers are miffed about a column in Sunday’s New York Times by Public Editor Byron Calame. Calame points out that bylines of stories written by freelancers in The Times Travel section look no different from those written by staff writers. Because it’s difficult for editors to monitor the ethical and reporting standards of freelancers, Calame writes, “readers deserve to know whether a freelancer or a staffer provides the content.” Many newspapers make a distinction, of course: Bylines of stories written by freelancers in the Los Angeles Times, for example, carry the phrase “Special to the Times” as opposed to “Times Staff Writer.”

But the column rubbed some writers the wrong way, spawning a heated discussion at travelwriters.com. Those who posted didn’t focus so much on Calame’s proposal that stories by freelancers be designated as such, which strikes me as reasonable. Instead, writers debated the ethics of press trips and whether discounted media rates or freebies compromise objectivity. It’s a subject we’ve covered before, and before that, too, and it’s not likely to go away soon. One peeved freelance writer who contributes to big-name papers fired off an e-mail to me hours after the column appeared: “I’m in favor of Calame’s suggestion that the NYT, like other major papers, distinguish between staffers and freelancers. Yup, Judy Miller and Jayson Blair are/were staffers. Damned if I want to be lumped in with THAT group.” Ouch.

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