Swick: Where Are All the Domestic Travel Stories?

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel Editor Thomas Swick was going through a stack of freelance travel story submissions recently when it hit him: Most of the stories he was receiving were about foreign travel. “I asked myself: What is wrong with the United States?” he wrote in a column last Sunday. “It is one of the most geographically diverse, ethnically rich, scenically stunning (three categories that travel writers butter their bread with) countries in the world. Why don’t its travel writers sing its glories? It is especially puzzling that in the golden age of flag waving I should be having more trouble than ever finding good stories about the United States. Are travel writers so out of touch with the rest of the country?” It’s a frustration Swick also mentioned in a recent World Hum interview. I suspect Swick hit the nail on the head when he acknowledged in the column that “nothing gets the adrenaline going like a border.” Like the upstart city hall reporter who dreams of a foreign posting, travel writers inspired by books like “Video Night in Kathmandu” and “The Old Patagonian Express” see the big stories, rightly or wrongly, as residing primarily in distant lands, the more distant the better.

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