Chapter 6
Tourism’s dark side
Posted: May 3, 2013 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: Heather Greenwood Davis, national geographic, national geographic traveler, travel advice, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel writer, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 6 encourages the travel journalist to write about the “worst” in travel. Heather Davis of National Geographic.com describes her family’s tough experience while traveling in China. More important than her stories of locals snapping pictures of her family at random and reaching out to touch their hair, are the lessons she learned after the experience. Here’s a bit from Davis’ piece:
As a family that believes there are things to be learned from everything in life, we try to turn even the most frustrating experiences into teachable moments. — Having your every move documented gets old, and quickly. The celeb-obsessed culture prevalent in many parts of the world can desensitize us to what it’s like to be on the other end of the lens. Our experience in China showed us how photo taking can go over the line and taught us to be better at…
Video and heritage travel in Australia
Posted: March 13, 2013 Contents: Chapter 3, Chapter 6 | Tags: australia, australian art, australian street art, culture, foreign culture, local culture, lonely planet, lonelyplanet.com, melbourne street art, street art, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel technology, travel video Leave a comment »Chapter 6 explains the intersection between two growing trends. The first discusses travelers who book their trips online while the other is the audience for travel video. Chapter 3 then breaks down topic niches’ for travel journalism stories including the heritage niche’. Lonely Planet posted a video that intersects the growing online travel video trend with the heritage niche’ topic. Their video titled “Melbourne’s artistic underbelly” features a part of Australia’s culture that is often over looked because of it’s lack of mainstream luster: its street art.
The video depicts a growing niche’ topic for travel journalists to explore. The street artists in Melbourne are now taking it upon themselves, much like the advice in the text, to lead groups of tourists as tour guides of Australia’s most overlooked artistic gems. The relatively short video encourages visitors to engage with and participate in these street art tours. The tour guides highlight the fact…
Digital divide
Posted: March 6, 2013 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: Corey Breier, digital divide, digital generation, matador network, matadornetwork.com, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel research, travel technology, travel writer, travel writing 1 Comment »This digital divide has less to do with socio-economic status and its relation to the inability of poor class people to access information electronically. Instead this division spreads older and younger generations apart in their views toward traveling, according to Corey Breier. Corey Breier an (young) author/contributor for the Matador Network identifies himself as a part of the “Digital Generation.” As a member of the digital generation Breier admits to spending months in front of a digital screen of some sort in contrast to an older generation who may have spent their time say, playing in the mud. This exposure to the digital world according to Breier has somewhat spoiled his traveling experience. Here’s an example of the author’s opinion:
To be fair, it does make life more interesting — I keep expecting cloned dinosaurs to pop out at me in the Hawaiian jungle, and graboids from Tremors to snatch me out of the sands of Anza-Borrego.
Yet…
Facing the fiscal cliff
Posted: January 22, 2013 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: frugal, frugal traveler, Julie Schwietert, matador network, matadornetwork.com, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel writer, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 6 discusses the opportunities for the travel journalist. As tensions build with all the media attention surrounding America’s economic situation, travel journalists may find themselves gaining more opportunities during tough times. Julie Schwietert of the Matador Network helps the journalist find opportunities as unemployment lingers around the country. Here’s one tip,
1. One sector’s pain is another’s gain.
The somewhat diluted value of the dollar has had an effect on other countries’ currencies that benefits travelers.
Consider the Mexican peso, for instance. After enjoying a lengthy period of relative stability (with the exchange rate being about 10 pesos to every 1 US dollar), the peso’s…
Indie tour guide
Posted: November 5, 2012 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: eileen smith, indie tour guide, matador network, matadornetwork.com, tour guide, travel journalism, travel research, travel writing, vayable, vayable.com Leave a comment »Chapter 6 discusses opportunities as a entrepreneurial travel journalist. Eileen Smith of the Matador Network encourages the travel journalist to make easy cash as an indie tour guide. Smith tells writers to “Monetize your expertise” and show travelers what your city is really like. Getting started is easy as signing up at vayable.com. Smith offers this:
It’s got a couchsurfery-element to it, but instead of giving your couch, you give expertise (for a price you set) while leading tours around where you live, taking people to secret haunts, hikes, or whatever it is you do wherever you are. All you do to get started is upload a picture and description of the service you offer, and wait for people to take you up on it. Afterwards, feedback (called “vouching” on the site) is key, as most people won’t want to spend…
The story – In three sentences or less
Posted: October 3, 2012 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: david miller, matador network, matadornetwork.com, micro travel notes, microblogging, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 6 cited microblogging — blog posts of 140 or fewer characters — as a tool for travel journalists. The Matador Network’s David Miller put out a call for something he calls Micro Travel Notes. Miller states,
“The goal was to tell a complete travel story–something with character, setting, chronology, and ideally, some kind of transformation–in three sentences or less.”
SmartBrief, a news feed for travel aggregators
Posted: August 25, 2012 Contents: Chapter 6 | Tags: aggregation, asta, smartbrief, travel aggregators, travel blog, travel journalism, travel writing 1 Comment »Aggregation, or “curation” as some bloggers prefer it, is the practice of blogging about content created by others.
Most aggregators set up feeds that push content to them. SmartBrief is a daily e-newsletter that pushes content about 25 key industries — including travel. Ten travel-related associations have signed on as partners with SmartBrief to add its advertising messages to the content SmartBrief aggregates and email to subscribers. It’s free, current and useful.
I subscribe to the ASTA-partnered feed and find at least one thing of value daily.
