Travel Writers and Press Releases

Okay

I am a freelance writer. I write about the singles scene, food and cooking, travel, arts and culture. So I belong to several professional organizations. I am trying out a membership on a site for travel writers. Today I received a newsletter in my inbox with all sorts of information including job news, press trips (I don't get the full monty because I am just trying it out right now) and press releases. Plus there was a list of the hottest topics on the bulletin boards.

For those of you who don't know, travel writing is one of the worst paid jobs on the planet and is getting more so. Publishers of guidebooks are offering much smaller compensation and requiring more from their writer, from covering more in the writing to taking your pics to promoting the book with an unsubsidized book tour. One Publisher is even requiring that the writer glue the covers of the book on before the books are shipped to their destinations. It makes being a travel writer a lot less glamorous and fun than it sounds.

Travel Magazines are changing too. Because publishing a magazine is more expensive each year, there is more advertising and less content in each issue. In addition, the writers are getting less pay for their work or not getting paid at all. Some publications are taking the cheap route and changing into vanity publications. Basically what that means is that they are turning anyone who has gone anywhere into "writers." So when Aunt Harriet or cousin Joe went to Cancun last summer, they could write about it, send it in to the magazine and get it published. They don't get paid. They make the "writer" feel special by giving them a byline instead and couple of free copies, thereby getting free articles on travel in exchange for a little ego stroking. The problem with this is that they are not objective and are just personal experiences, not always a good reflection of the actual experience of a particular destination.

Each traveler focuses on what, to them, makes a good or bad vacation. I know someone who hates Paris, saying it's too dirty. That has never been my experience, but then I wasn't looking for dirt. I know a guy who won't go to San Francisco because, he says, "it's full of gays." This is ridiculous of course. San Francisco is no "gayer" than any other place, the people there just don't try to hide it. I love that about them. And besides just because a large group of people do something doesn't mean you have to join them. It's not like a homosexuality recruiter meets every plane at the airport trying to get new members. I also know a woman who won't go to any coastal states in the US because she's afraid that the state will "break-off and fall into the sea." How stupid is that? One of the problems with the untrained writer publishing articles in magazines is that it is biased by the writer's likes and dislikes. Reporters and travel writers are usually trained to look at the place with an unbiased eye. If they can't do it, they don't work.

The reason that many of us also have blogs is because we want to share other information that the editors of the good travel magazines don't want to publish. For instance, one of my other blogs focus' on the dating ritual and how I meet and date during my travels. Most mainstream publishers are not interested in "Sex and the Nomadic Traveler." But some of the things that happen in people's dating experiences are hilarious and fun to read. Hence the blog.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I get dozens of press releases every day. The reason they are sent to writers is to save themselves the cost of actually having a writer come up with something on his or her own. They are both bad and good. Today I received a PR from somewhere in Pennsylvania, promoting a snack food tour. The lengthy information contained in that Press Release boiled down to the fact that we travel writers were supposed to promote a tour of junk food factories. I don't know about other people, but I have never found factory tours all that interesting. And I am certainly not going to regurgitate the information laid forth by someone else on something I have never seen. But I haven't been invited to come and see for myself. I'm just supposed to take what the public relations agent says, put it in my own words and publish. No thanks.

The only good thing about the Press Releases are that you are instantly notified when something new comes along. So I read them anyway. The problem with only writing about what I've actually seen and done is more expensive than the Press Release regurgitation route. I have to pay for the trips myself so that I can do a good unbiased article.

Travel writing is a money losing proposition. So why do it? Because the actually experience of travel is fun. Because I get a lot more than just a travel story out of each trip and because I can't NOT do it.

---

---