Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Conde Nasty Traveler?
by Michael Yessis | 11.11.04 | 9:17 PM ET
William Georgiades’ Adventures in Journalism: World Traveler, a story on MediaBistro.com about his struggles to write for Conde Nast Traveler magazine, has been the talk of journalism circles in the past day or so. What’s noteworthy about the piece isn’t that Georgiades’ editor had him jump through hoops. Every writer has horror stories about editors, just as every editor has horror stories about writers. It’s the fact that he went public with his travails that makes it juicy.
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Yahoo! BuzzLonely Planet Seeks Stories
by Jim Benning | 10.07.04 | 7:10 PM ET
The publisher is accepting entries for a travel humor competition, and all entries will be considered for a forthcoming book. The deadline is November 30.
Blogging the Perils of Travel Writing
by Jim Benning | 10.07.04 | 7:09 PM ET
Travel writer Carl Parkes has launched a weblog devoted to, as he puts it on the site, “the travails of travel writing.” So far eschewing personal commentary, Parkes has posted previously published articles by prominent writers, including Thomas Swick and Jason Wilson. Swick’s essay exploring the tired conventions of the genre, which first appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, is a must-read for any travel writer. Parkes is the author of six guidebooks and a winner of two Lowell Thomas awards, so he knows a thing or two about the business. We look forward to watching this new blog develop.
Travel Writers Vs. the Big, Hungry PR Machine: It’s War!
by Jim Benning | 09.27.04 | 7:25 PM ET
We’ve read a lot of critiques of modern travel writing, but none with the overheated rhetoric of Tim McDonald’s recent piece, “Travel Writers Often Turn a Blind Eye to Reality.” “There is a war going on,” he writes. Travel writers are “consorting with the enemy.” McDonald pulls from Thomas Swick’s critique from the Columbia Journalism Review to support a lot of his points, which isn’t surprising. Swick’s is a cogent piece. What is surprising, though, is where McDonald’s article is posted: travelgolf.com.
“Barcelona was Perfect!”
by Jim Benning | 09.09.04 | 11:33 PM ET
That’s the conclusion of pop star turned travel writer Alicia Keys, who is now contributing occasional travel stories to the New York Daily News. “I just love the pen and the paper,” Keys recently told the Associated Press in an article about her new vocation. “I like to document what I’ve seen and what I feel.” Keys recently felt that Barcelona was perfect. Or as she put it in her Daily News article: “Another thing I fell in love with in Barcelona was the constant feeling that everything was absolutely perfect. The sun is blinding and warms you deeply; the water is transparent and shines with the sun’s reflection. The beach has the kind of soft sand that’s so good for running barefoot in. The architecture is grand and historic.” If all that weren’t enough to convince any New York editor that Keys is the ideal writer to chronicle her journeys for the city’s urbane readers, Keys then boldly asserted: “And it’s all there like a playground waiting to be explored.”
Lowell Thomas Awards Announced
by Jim Benning | 09.08.04 | 11:38 PM ET
Winners of the 20th annual Lowell Thomas Awards were announced Tuesday by the Society of American Travel Writers. Travel + Leisure won for best magazine. The Boston Globe’s travel section received top honors in the 500,000-plus circulation category. LonelyPlanet.com won for best Web site, and Rolf Potts’ Virgin Trail: Travels in the Other Central America, which appeared on Slate, won for best Internet travel article. Congrats to the winners.
Interviewed: Greenwald, Hasbrouck, Leo
by Michael Yessis | 09.07.04 | 11:39 PM ET
While we were on our August hiatus, other quality media outlets posted interviews with several travel writers of interest. “Whose Panties are These?” editor Jennifer L. Leo discussed her career and philosophy with Rolf Potts, and Jeff Greenwald and Edward Hasbrouck sat for Motionsickness. The magazine’s editor Steve Wilson also profiled “Take Me With You” author Brad Newsham.
Swick: Where Are All the Domestic Travel Stories?
by Jim Benning | 05.16.04 | 12:48 AM ET
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.
Do Travel Writers Get Africa Right?
by Michael Yessis | 05.03.04 | 8:25 PM ET
Often they don’t, writes Jeevan Vasagar in Friday’s Guardian. “[W]hen confronted with the breadth and complexity of Africa, most travel writing simply fails,” Vasagar writes. “[P]erhaps the miserable writer should just stay in a five-star hotel now and then, take an air-conditioned bus and give the continent a break.” Vasagar criticism targets specific writers and books, including Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari” and Shiva Naipaul’s “North of South.”
Q-and-A With Stephanie Elizondo Griest
by Jim Benning | 04.22.04 | 8:29 PM ET
The author of the new travel memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana fields questions from Rolf Potts on his Web site. Griest talks about the challenges of life as a travel writer (largely financial), as well as the many rewards. “Traveling teaches you the inherent value of a day and the infinite possibilities each new one holds within,” she says. “Writing enables you to share the extraordinary stories of the people whose paths you cross along the way. The partnership of the two is utter bliss.” I just started the book and find it to be witty and thoughtful. The book’s cover features an appreciative blurb from the New Yorker’s John Lee Anderson. Readers in Los Angeles can see Griest this weekend. She’s appearing Saturday on a travel writing panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books— the greatest annual public gathering in the city. The panel also includes Pico Iyer, Don George and Mark Rotella.
Travel Writing Still Not Dead (Whew!)
by Michael Yessis | 04.19.04 | 8:35 PM ET
In the course of reviewing five books on travel through the Middle East, all of which meet his approval, Barnaby Rogerson in the Lebanon Daily Star meditates on the state of modern travel writing. It’s a nice little riff. Here’s a sample: “As the era of mass-travel got underway in the ‘60s the focus of travel writing began to shift,” he writes. “The desire for topographical description changed as people began to see the landscapes for themselves. Those wonderful evocations of landscape and color in the works of, say, Pierre Loti, were no longer required by the modern reader, who can book a trip across the Gobi over the internet or watch a Touareg music festival on television. As the travel-industry has grown, has it left room for travel-writing? It has.”
“On the Press Trip You Are Treated Like the General of a Liberating Army”
by Jim Benning | 04.15.04 | 8:33 PM ET
The debate over whether a travel writer’s acceptance of freebies taints his or her coverage of a place is old news in the U.S. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, many stateside travel publications refuse to publish stories about journeys funded by anyone other than the publication or writer. But according to the Telegraph, the debate gained new currency in the UK this week after a controversial travel story appeared in the Mail newspaper. In the inimitable words of the Telegraph, “The cosy world of travel journalism has been stirred by an article lifting the lid on the freebie.” According to the Telegraph’s account, Mail writer Roderick Gilchrist published a travel story about a fabulous trip to the Caribbean, describing the visit in no uncertain terms as a “press trip.” “This,” Gilchrist wrote, “is where a disparate group of journalists and a travel PR or two are thrown together with the objective of writing a favourable account of a resort, hotel or airline.” Gilchrist went on to write: “On the press trip you are treated like the general of a liberating army.” Such honesty, the Telegraph’s article notes, is highly unusual. (Gilchrist’s story is available here; the “press trip” section begins on page three. Talk about burying the lead!) The Telegraph’s coverage of the controversy offers a compelling exploration of the debate, noting that although many magazines now refuse to publish travel articles based on comped journeys, their coverage is no less tainted because their reliance on advertising revenue requires that articles remain relentlessly positive. All of which explains, in our opinion, why so many travel publications are often so dull.
‘Yoga’ Takes People’s Prize
by Michael Yessis | 04.14.04 | 8:37 PM ET
Readers selected Geoff Dyer’s Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It as the year’s best travel book in the WH Smith People’s Choice Book Awards. About 148,000 readers cast votes via book stores, the Internet and libraries throughout the UK, according to the BBC.
Travel Writing: A “Quintessentially Gay Genre”
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.04 | 9:02 PM ET
So says Raphael Kadushin, editor of the new anthology Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing. According to an article by Judith Davidoff in Wisconsin’s Capital Times, Kadushin says most gay children and youth, regardless of where they live, grow up with a sense of isolation and detachment: “It’s great training for a travel writer where you’re going to a culture and trying to size it up and get some sense of it as an outsider.” Troy Petenbrink of the Houston Voice writes: “The gay subtext of some of the articles in ‘Wonderlands’ might not always be readily apparent. But the writing is generally captivating and certain to satisfy one’s quest for discovery of the world and one’s place in it.”
On the Road to See the Kerouac House
by Jim Benning | 02.23.04 | 9:10 PM ET
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Thomas Swick visits the Orlando, Florida house where Jack Kerouac stayed just before the New York Times proclaimed him the voice of his generation. Kerouac may not often be associated with Florida, but a local author told Swick he thought it was important people knew Kerouac spent time in suburban Florida. “I want people, especially young people, to embrace the idea of history in the suburbs,” Bob Kealing said. “I call it suburban archaeology. This idea of him [Kerouac] as the precursor of the hippies. He was Catholic, he was conservative, and he lived with his mother in the suburbs.”
