Apart from news and views on media covering tourism, travel, and hospitality, writers, editors, photogs, and bloggers share tips, leads, ideas, news, gripes. PR reps/journos ISO press releases/trips, see also "PR/Marketing." Opinions stated are not necessarily those of Tripatini.
Free access to Encyclopaedia Britannica for journalists
My editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica has asked me to extend this offer to all my journalist colleagues. You are invited to enjoy free access to all its factchecked resources, and if you do link to a Britannica story in your articles, none of the content linked to will be paywalled. Your readers in turn will have full and free access to Britannica's content. To get your free, personal subscription, just go to britannica.com/journalists and enter the code: EXPERT-CONTENT.
Read more…
Comments
Kenya's Ukambani and Samburu regions:
I'm spending the next month travelling as a writer/chronicler with a group of eye specialists as they visit and treat the people of the remote villages of Kenya's Ukambani. This is my fifth year to travel with the team and there are so many stories to be told.
After the work in the Ukambani I will visit the Samburu people and especially areas beloved by Ernest Hemmingway. But it's not about Hemmingway, it's about the people of this area and how the constant droughts over so many years have affected them.
There are many story ideas for an imaginative Editor. I leave in the coming days and will be out of contact for almost a month... so Hurry Up and contact me!
Thanks for your time.
Brendan O.A. Harding
@SamScribe: "Can those of you who actually try to earn a living as travel writers ever stop writing, querying, networking? Do any of you really have any down time?"
I think that what you may be missing is viewing the content mill factor in the longer perspective that makes it fit for these types of people and their lives. I definitely don't think it can ever work in terms of just measuring it on a dollar per word traditional factor. Look -- along with what I referred to before as the "individual context" there's that wider context which is like an 800 lb. gorilla in all these discussions - namely, the Great Recession. And you don't hear that brought up, ever, in discussions where"leading" travel bloggers who do it all on their own blog and SM "experts" are prevalent - except of course when they rush to cite the downfall of travel editors at newspapers as the sole important statistic in why traditional media is tanking. Interestingly, they never detail how their model of social media usage and travel blogging is guaranteed to build income whereas any other usage of SM they're also quick to decry as some kind of violation of their "community" religion. I think there's two things going on behind this type of attitude from this group of travel bloggers: (1) the said Great Recession. And I get their fear, and why they want to be so sure of the future and what is a guarantee of success. I mean, if I had a 3 month old kid and was 20ish, or even if I was mid-age and 49 and had a teenager, wouldn't my underlying and unspoken fear of the present and future be: "what the hell will happen to my child if I'm suddenly gone? What can I be sure of leaving them?" And (2) The second or alternative backstory to this one-size model attitude from (some) travelbloggers is: traditional print media and all it entails on the busy end as far as querying/researching/invoicing was never an easy business, even in the best of economies. You have to be a trooper and a journeyman like Allan Lynch, and even then you have to fight the battle every week. Who told you it was going to be a cakewalk to be your own boss? Many of these bloggers came into the writing arena - or tried to - in the early part of the Recession. A few slams of the door as far as rejection from a few editors, and they were ready to ditch all that. It was far more glamorous and instantaneous to just also ditch your boring desk day job and "see the world" and become a legend in your own mind because you had 50,000 twitter followers suddenly living vicariously through you. For some of them, I think it's motive (1) with the existential fear factor and motive (2) that smacks of narcissism (to me, anyway) that are often both at work.
Life is, and always has been, complicated for those who write about travel and stay in the swim and manage to stay afloat. But, once you're launched and build your income sources, I just don't ascribe to the "one-size-fits-all" mantra that gets preached at events and groups like -- oh, well, I won't go down there this morning:) But I hope you get my general drift, even if your own drift is different. And that's my point - to each his/her own, I don't want experts telling me the "correct" way to run either my life or my business. Thank you. I'll pass on that KoolAid.
Ed, that's the other thing. I don't have time to maintain my website. I still have paying gigs, so I don't want to uncut myself by posting material on my website when I can still sell it to other markets.
Are people using social media to replace querying?
At a travel conference last August I heard of one woman who has 900 followers on Twitter even though she's never posted anything.
Ed, you're right, SM does keep your name out there. It's much easier to get a power blogger to review a new book when they already know my face and my style from being social on web. I just can't stay balanced doing it professionally on the road. I concentrate on relationship building and RTing great posts during my home "work" days when i have two big monitors to display several mediums at one time and i don't accidentally push "send" before my thoughts are complete. This is a newer revelation as i am trying to make 2011 the year of intentional passion, not just passion. It's easy to just jump in and ride the wave of SM willy-nilly. I was there. Still, it is an adventure...
No, the curling iron et al, is not me at all, but I once travelled with a woman who had AN ENTIRE extra suitcase for her makeup and hair care products. AND she got the guys on the trip to carry it for her!
I decided when I started this gig nearly twenty years ago that I would only take as much as I could handle myself. I tell you, sometimes it gets to be a close call, but I manage.
This was the bag that gave out. The PR woman from Cathy Pacific and I crouched down behind other bags to miss being hit by handles and screws and straps flying everywhere and bouncing off the walls.
BTW, I don't care how petite you are: I'm not lifting your bloody bag into the overhead bin, in and out of SUVs, or up stairs because this rural resort we're at: a) doesn't have bellmen, and b) doesn't have an elevator.
Who takes a curling iron, hair dryer and steamer to an eco resort? (Sorry Sally, I was projecting, I know it wasn't you.)
-
37
-
38
-
39
-
40
-
41
of 127 Next