Then it seemed like the print world was losing impetus, and online was where things were happening. So I got a blog.

Now, in what I think might be a world first (please tell me if it isn’t!), a print magazine has devoted a page to reproducing my blog in print form. Gulf Life, the inflight magazine of Bahrain-based Gulf Air, published in London by Ink and distributed around the world, has a track record of innovation, in both design and content. They contacted me recently and said they were interested in “reversing the flow” of print to online, and wanted to launch a regular column showcasing blogs of Middle East interest in the magazine. Was I interested?

So now I blog about something, then a month later it appears on the blog page of a print magazine – and now here I am, blogging about it… Feels a bit, well, incestuous.

A really interesting development. It’s certainly a fantastic opportunity for me – thank you, Gulf Life – and an unusual way to monetize my blog. But it also raises an interesting side-question: what’s the difference between a blog and a column?

In the comments, Debbie Ferm of Traveldither.com wrote, “Like all web copy, travel writing will need to be more scannable… almost like copywriting.” What a pity if she’s right!

What interests me are people and places. I’m a writer. I care about the travel industry only to the extent of how it impacts on the stories I want to tell. The stuff I’m proud to write – which, not coincidentally, matches the stuff I like to read – is not round-ups or hotel reviews or sponsored puffs. That’s for paying the bills. When I’m a doddery old grandpa, few people may care about my stories of travel, but absolutely nobody will give a monkeys about my opinion of the travel industry in the long-forgotten 2010s.

Newspapers have painted themselves into a corner. By abandoning the journalistic model of paying skilled writers to report on people and places, they turned themselves into mouthpieces for the travel industry, which has funded the creation of travel ‘content’ for years now.

That model is now breaking down, as the travel industry withdraws its funding and cuts back on print advertising. This has left traditional media high and dry: by their parsimony and, some might say, corruption in years gone by, they’ve killed the goose.

Online travel writing is in a different place. Divisions and micro-definitions get boring, but perhaps one is justified here: travel journalism, i.e. round-ups, site reports, reviews, listings, investigations, industry analysis, is different from travel writing, i.e. stories of people and places, features, profiles, cultural insight, long-form creativity.

Both are valid. Thanks to the old media models, the former dominates. It shouldn’t.

And, online, it needn’t. Long-form feature writing about travel matters. It can do things that no other kind of writing can do, and can make connections that might otherwise never be made. Old media nonetheless sold it down the river.

If we accept Debbie’s notion of online travel writing as glorified holiday-brochure copywriting, SEO’d to within an inch of its life, the same thing will happen again.

One comment on Travelblather is particular telling: Pam, who blogs at Nerd’s Eye View, says she’s tired of travel journalists calling themselves professional. “What does that mean, anyway?” she asks. I agree it’s a tough term to define; after all, unlike the ‘professions’ of law, medicine and so on, you don’t have to pass an exam to be a travel journalist. Anyone can try their hand at it – like photography.

I’m a photographer, but I consider myself an amateur: I carry a fairly decent camera with me when I’m working, and have had dozens of photos published – from low-res national newspapers to full-page bleeds in high-quality glossy magazines – but a real photographer would instantly be able to tell that I’m actually not much good. I can do composition, and the very best of my pics are worth a look, but technically they’re all pretty much a dog’s dinner.

For me, that’s the main point about professionalism. It might be hard to define – but you sure as heck notice when it’s not there.

That hooks into what I see is the big, big difference between bloggers (even full-time bloggers) and journalists. (I can already tell that this isn’t going to make me very popular in some quarters.)

Editing crucial

I blog, I write for newspapers and magazines and I author books. I’ve also been an editor on books and magazines, a sub-editor, a proofreader – I work with words: that’s how I make a living to support my family. I’m a writer.

And I’m a better writer when I’m edited.

I love blogging: it’s a uniquely diverse medium. Being solely responsible for the stuff you publish is a real challenge. There are some great bloggers – and some rubbish journalists.

But still, only the latter are professionals. Why? Because they are being edited – that is, their creativity is reviewed before publication by people who work with words for a living. Editing has become unfashionable, and badly edited books and texts are everywhere – lots of people don’t even know what editing is – but it is absolutely crucial to the process of writing. Journalists are edited, bloggers are not. Bloggers (and readers of blogs) might see that as an advantage – and, in some cases, it is – but on the whole, in most instances, as a broad generalisation, editing makes journalists better writers than bloggers.

By ‘better’ I mean they use language in a more proficient way, say things more clearly, complete the job in a more pleasing way. It’s a quality issue. Most carpenters handle wood better than most plasterers. Most journalists handle words better than most bloggers (the ones I read, anyway).

Skills and motivation

There’s also a skill-set involved in journalism which bloggers don’t need. Researching, interviewing, extracting key details from a mass of information, developing sources, cross-checking. Knowing how to use these techniques (and why they are important) makes you a professional. Journalists are accountable for what they write in a way that bloggers simply aren’t. That doesn’t mean bloggers are ‘worse’ – indeed, they have a whole skill-set of their own that many journalists only vaguely understand – but it does mean that bloggers must gain new skills if they want to become journalists, and vice versa.

There’s another, linked point. Journalists make a living from what they write. Bloggers make a living because of what they write. There’s a big difference. If bloggers write stuff that is engaging, insightful, well conceived, well structured and intelligent, but that doesn’t bring traffic (and clicks), they make no money. By necessity, because of our desperately restrictive ad-centred online culture, bloggers must write stuff that is – in the broadest sense – popular. It can be crud in terms of content, style and/or purpose, but it must attract wide interest. (If it doesn’t, those bloggers make less money – or simply don’t attract followers.)

The only criterion for journalists, by contrast, is that their stuff must be well written. It doesn’t matter about the perception of popularity – because, in virtually all cases, the subject that the journalist is writing about has already been vetted and approved by experienced and (sorry) professional editors. And the beauty of a free press is that journalists can write stuff which might be unpopular, but which might still be important, and can have their material taken seriously by a diverse readership. They fail only if what they produce is badly written. Like I said before, professional quality is really difficult to define – but you know when it’s not there.

World of difference

There’s a world of difference between me making a soufflé, and a professional chef doing it. I can research the causes of the First World War and give a lecture to a hall full of students – but a professional academic would do it better. Leave me alone for long enough with your car and a Haynes manual, and I could probably fix that knocking noise in the back – but a professional mechanic would do it better (and more quickly).

It’s the same with writing. There’s plenty of room for blogging and journalism – but let’s not get the two mixed up.

I approached the relevant tourist board and requested a return flight to Destination X plus hotel accommodation for me to do my research. They got the ball rolling. All totally standard practice – nothing out of the ordinary yet.

As freelancers will know, though, two commissions are rarely enough to make a living. So I pitched another idea from Destination X to a different National Newspaper Travel Editor (NNTE 2), who is responsible for that newspaper’s online travel content. He liked it, but said there was no budget to pay me for it.

Modest proposal

So I suggested an alternative. Instead of having the newspaper pay me to write about Destination X, how about if I asked the tourist board to pay me instead? It wouldn’t be ‘advertorial’ – where a travel article (or whole section) is sponsored by a tourist board or travel company who dictate what gets written. All my research and writing would be done alone as normal and I would file directly to the editor – but the tourist board would foot the bill for my time and, erhmm, expertise. Result: the paper gets great content from which it can generate revenue, I get paid and Destination X gets coverage – all happy, right?

Nope. My modest proposal was rejected out of hand. NNTE 2 saw it as tying him to the tourist board. It was a ‘no’ on principle.

So I took yet another pitch about Destination X to a different National Newspaper Travel Editor. NNTE 3 liked the idea and was happy to run it – it tied in nicely with a similarly themed article from the same region that was already in his schedules – but again had no budget to pay me. I suggested the alternative payment method, but again it was refused on principle.

Principles

I wonder, though, what principle is at stake. Newspapers have no (or very little) money to pay for travel articles. NNTE 3 told me he now runs only one freelance piece a week, if that. Other newspapers commission nothing from freelancers at all anymore, running only “What I Did On My Holidays” articles written by celebs, staffers from other sections of the same newspaper and authors with a book to plug. Almost all seem to lament losing the insight, the expertise and the sheer variety of freelance content – but their hands are tied.

Yet I think both NNTEs I approached thought my payment idea risked undermining their credibility. I wonder, with respect all round, how much of that is left. Opening one recent national newspaper travel section, you got a welcome message from the boss of a tourist board followed by a dozen articles praising his region – including the likes of How Great It Is To Walk In The [X] Hills footed by a paragraph mentioning that [X] Railways serves all the destinations mentioned in the article, and underlined by a chunky banner advert for, oh, [X] Railways.

I’m not questioning any individual journalist’s integrity – or the necessity for that newspaper to seek funding through sponsorship – but I wonder how much credibility the public gives to such material. It was, effectively, a brochure in newspaper form. Handy for a spare weekend, but Woodward & Bernstein it ain’t.

Editorial independence

The key point of principle rests on the newspapers’ reputation for editorial independence. That, traditionally, has depended on their ability to fund their businesses through interspersing editorial with advertising. That model is now under severe threat.

How to pay the piper?

So far so bad. Yet with travel advertorial, the tail has begun wagging the dog. Companies with a vested interest are starting to be able to dictate terms. With the ongoing financial reshaping of the industry, editorial independence is dangerously threatened.

Putting an end to advertorial – by disconnecting the right of the journalist to get paid from the payer’s being able to control what is written – seems to me to be an innovative and effective route back to integrity and independence.

NNTE 2 queried what would happen if he didn’t like the piece I wrote and chose not to run it. Perhaps he thought he’d be in hock to the person paying my fee. But he – as now – would have no contact, and certainly no relationship, with the tourist board or travel firm paying me. If the story isn’t good enough to run, I simply wouldn’t get paid – but I would then be free to take it elsewhere. Since it would have no price-tag attached, the chances of one or other newspaper/magazine somewhere in the world picking it up for publication would be much higher than at present, where a ‘killed’ story is effectively dead in the water. I would then go back to my fee-payer and renegotiate.

Would a tourist board with extra-deep pockets be able to dictate to a writer what they should write about? Anything’s possible – but any journalist worth their salt would know when they’re being fed a line and would reject it for the sake of their own reputation, and (more to the point) any editor worth theirs would be able to detect a whitewash instantly. Tourist boards and travel firms already heavily subsidise the writing of most travel journalism, with literally thousands spent behind the scenes on a single article for air tickets, hotels, tours, guides and activities. Does it matter where the final, relatively insignificant cash fee to the journalist comes from?

In an industry unable to pay its suppliers, securing outside funding while safeguarding quality could actually put everybody on their toes and, in effect, raise standards. Suddenly, travel journalists would be motivated to double-check their sources. Reputations would be at stake.

Into the abyss

(Credit: myopera.com)

Travel journalism is staring into the abyss. The economics of the industry don’t really work, and haven’t done since newspapers started to rely on travel firms to facilitate creation of content instead of paying to send their own travel journalists abroad. With a shrinking world having reduced the experiential gap between writer and reader to almost nothing, travel journalists – unfairly – have a reputation as just another breed of fat-cats, swanning about being showered with freebies by travel companies and airlines in return for writing more or less bland holiday reports. The quid-pro-quo editorial models currently in place – airline gives journo ticket; journo namechecks airline in return – perpetuate that myth. Overtly sponsored advertorial doesn’t help.

Since newspapers are increasingly unable to pay for professionally produced, independent travel content, I thought my modest proposal to have someone else cough up might work. Clearly, I was wrong. But some alternative system has to be invented soon. I’m old-fashioned enough to think that people still appreciate well-written, insightful, long-form travel journalism – writing that is closer in spirit to the foreign pages than the lifestyle supplement. If I’m right, but the newspapers won’t pay for it, who will?

Footnote

No sour grapes, by the way. I think NNTE 2 and 3 have missed an opportunity, but that’s OK; I can appreciate that now is perhaps not the time to be testing new models on an ad-hoc basis. I’m talking to both of them about other ideas. Meanwhile, anyone thinking of trying to start out in travel journalism should be aware that I also spoke to NNTE 4 (no freelance budget; staffers only), NNTE 5 (Destination X is too far down our wishlist), NNTE 6 (no freelance budget)… It’s a jungle out there. NNTE 1 has my full attention.

I must admit that my mind isn’t fully on the guidebook job in hand: I’m returning to Oman next month, for my first visit to Salalah, in the southern Dhofar region. Ranulph Fiennes’ book Atlantis of the Sands about the discovery of Ubar, a ‘lost city’ in the Dhofari desert, is getting me in the mood. The tales of military derring-do are less than gripping (Fiennes was a mercenary, seconded to Dhofar in 1968-69 to protect the then Sultan of Oman against Marxist insurgents) but Fiennes knows his Arabian history, clearly understands and respects Dhofari culture, and can call on a nice turn of phrase. Six bald words he gives to a remote desert settlement named Fasad, describing it as “a place of wind and spiders”. It’s one of the most exciting, evocative lines of travel writing I think I’ve ever read. I now have to see Fasad.

So that’s my problem. I love Switzerland, honestly I do. And I’m trying to focus on updating my Swiss guidebook. It’s just that, even with an electric storm as a garnish, Baroque Solothurn can’t quite match up to the allure of “a place of wind and spiders”. I’m already half in Dhofar.

Sorry, Switzerland.

Baloney! It may not be a disaster for the Penguin chief executive, but it’s pretty miserable for the people being abandoned.

They also include “one or two” people at Rough Guides – part of Penguin Travel and publisher of three of my books.

I got an email yesterday from a senior editor at RGs saying that the first edition of a new title, which I was about to be contracted to write next year for publication in October 2011, has been “put on hold indefinitely”, since there will no longer be sufficient staff in-house to edit it – and no budget to outsource the editing to freelancers. I know, too, that other titles have gone down the swannee.

Meanwhile, John Makinson, chief executive of Penguin, “pointed to Penguin’s ‘strong’ autumn schedule, and added that he expected to see a bounce-back in areas such as travel-guide publishing.”

Well, chum, it’s hard to bounce back when you cut new titles!

The message to aspiring travel writers, and old hacks alike, is to diversify or die. Put all your eggs into one basket and you expose yourself to the big heave-ho: freelancers are always the first to be “let go”. When I left my last proper job – as a Rough Guide editor – in 2003, I relied on that one company for virtually all my income, as both a staffer and a freelance author. Now, thankfully, I make my living from numerous sources. This cancellation is a blow, but what I didn’t have I won’t miss. Pity the people dumped by a company with a chief executive who has the gall to tell them “it’s not a disaster”.

Time to up the pace and start looking for more ways to earn…

Ink are market leaders, producing 30+ inflight magazines for airlines all over the world, and have won fistfuls of design awards, including for Ryanair. It’s easy to see why. Gulf Air are not exactly the most prestigious of clients – a small, struggling state-owned carrier at the unfashionable end of the Gulf – but rather than copy the kind of instantly forgettable pap that’s churned out for Etihad and Emirates by Dubai-based magazine publishers, they’ve instead created something worthy of newsstand sale. My articles aside, it’s a genuinely interesting monthly about Middle East life and culture, with a dash of Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur and occasionally Paris and London thrown in. Take a look.

Do inflight magazines matter? My impression is they do. If they’re rubbish (which, let’s face it, most still are), all they do is reinforce to Ms/Mr Traveller the sense that both the airline and the destination it ‘represents’ are rubbish: at worst (stand up Air Malta and Saudi Airlines), they turn the airline and the destination into a laughing stock. At best (Gulf, Swiss, Air Canada) they lead you intelligently into the culture and the outlook of your destination while still in midair.

And for the hard-pressed travel writer, inflight magazines are a godsend: I write for 8 or 10 of them, and would find it that much harder to make ends meet without them.