A step ahead of the stomach ache
Posted: November 5, 2012 Contents: Chapter 4 | Tags: budget travel, budgettravel.com, Fran Golden, stay healthy while traveling, travel health, travel journalism, travel research, travel safety, travel sickness, travel tips, travel writer, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 4 offers brief advice on how to stay healthy while traveling. Budgettravel.com‘s Fran Golden offers similar advice coaching travelers on how to keep their stomach safe while traveling. Golden offers a few tips every traveler can remember to avoid being apart of the 50 percent of travelers that receive some type of stomach sickness while abroad, he advises:
- One easy rule of thumb: If your lodgings don’t allow you to flush toilet paper, don’t drink the water. It’s a sign you’re visiting a region with an unsafe water supply.
- As for food, “Boil it, peel it, or forget it” has been the standard recommendation. Make sure food is served piping hot. If it’s been left out to cool, it could be harboring a growing colony of bacteria.
- Fly from flies. Never eat food that isn’t protected from insects, which can contaminate even freshly cooked…
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…
Travel writer as an Orwellian
Posted: November 5, 2012 Contents: Resources | Tags: aaron hamburger, freelance journalists, matador network, matadornetwork.com, orwellian, travel advice, travel journalism, travel writer, travel writing 2 Comments »Resources offers advice from 100 freelance journalists. Aaron Hamburger from the Matador Network offers this: Be an Orwellian. Here’s a tidbit from Hamburger’s article:
Orwell’s prime enemy was vagueness, dullness, and cliché. In his formulation, either you’re choosing language or language chooses you. Or as Orwell puts it: ‘Modern writing at its worst does not consist of picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images to make their meaning clearer. It consists of gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by somebody else.’
Safety first, deploy decoy wallet
Posted: October 28, 2012 Contents: Chapter 4 | Tags: christopher elliot, national geographic, safety travel tips, travel advice, travel journalism, travel safety, travel writer, travel writing 1 Comment »Chapter 4 gives the travel writer two pieces of pre-travel advice on safety while traveling. Christopher Elliott of The National Geographic adds to this advice by offering the writer tips to solve every crisis during travel. Elliot offers this bit:
Regardless of your locale, always watch your things when in a new place. Carry a throwaway wallet or decoy purse containing daily cash and old photos but nothing that would make you hesitate to hand it over in a holdup. Keep a credit card and cash in an inside pocket. 1. Hand over the fake wallet. 2. Notify the police.
Do not hesitate to hand over anything in a hold up, no material object is worth risking your life.
More about ethics
Posted: October 28, 2012 Contents: Chapter 7 | Tags: accepting subsidies for travel, ethics, jina moore, jinamoore.com, journalist ethics, travel ethics, travel journalism, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 7 encourages the travel writer to remain ethical when accepting subsidies for travel. Jina Moore of jinamoore.com discusses another ethical standard the travel writer must uphold when creating stories. Moore an author and multimedia producer gives 5 rules in obtaining consent from the subject of the story. Here are a few of the rules to remember:
- Meaningful consent comes from the survivor.
- Meaningful consent is given for specific use.
- Meaningful content is given at an appropriate time.
Your subject has put a level of trust in you as a travel writer, don’t abuse that trust.
Lead, Pitch
Posted: October 28, 2012 Contents: Chapter 4 | Tags: craft perfect pitch, david miller, lead, matador network, matadornetwork.com, perfect pitch, pitch, travel journalism, travel journalist pitch, travel writer pitch, travel writing 1 Comment »Chapter 4 teaches the travel writer about different story elements. David Miller of the Matador Network offers advice to the travel writer on how to craft a perfect pitch. Miller discusses the importance of the Lead and how ultimately a good pitch can only get the writer so far. Miller offers six ways to improve the lead of the story a few are:
- Lead with the narrator in a problematic or overtly stressful situation.
- Lead with a disarmingly simple and short declarative sentence.
- Begin in-medias-res, with descriptions placing the reader in the middle of a scene.
Remember the lead must be able to capture the readers attention to force them to read the rest of the story.
Dealing with editors
Posted: October 23, 2012 Contents: Chapter 5 | Tags: editors, Julie Schwietert, matador network, matadornetwork.com, relationship with editors, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel journalist editor, travel magazine editor, travel writer, travel writing, travel writing editor Leave a comment »Chapter 5 delves into the pitching and getting published process. Julie Schwietert of the Matador Network shows the writer how to properly develop a relationship with an editor before getting work published. Schwietert also gives the writer advice on how to deal with negative feedback from editors. Here’s a bit of her advice,
They change words in your story- or even reshape it entirely.
How to respond
Try to react to this situation with as little ego investment as possible. These types of decisions aren’t intended to cramp your style–otherwise the editor wouldn’t have worked with you in the first place. Understand that editorial decisions reflect a complex algebra of factors, including the editor’s understanding of the publication’s goals, audience, and even finances; many of these variables won’t be clear to you at all. If something really rubs you…
Participate! The best way to get the story
Posted: October 20, 2012 Contents: Chapter 1 | Tags: jennifer neves, participate, travel advice, travel journalism, travel writers exchange, travel writing Leave a comment »Jennifer Neves of Travel Writers Exchange.com offers advice to travelers on how to get the biggest bang for his or her traveling buck. The author, a professional travel writer, offers this tidbit as her most important way to get the biggest bang for your buck:
“Participate! If you are always observing, you may be able to write about an event in great detail. The colors, the smells, the action, but you will never be able to write about how it feels. Reflecting on what you have experienced is more powerful than a hundred pages of descriptions about the things you have not experienced – and more interesting to read. Your readers want to relate to you. They want to relate to the people in the places you describe.”
Akin to the advice offered in Chapter 1 Neves…
The travel writer as an ecotourist
Posted: October 20, 2012 Contents: Chapter 3 | Tags: bonnie tsui, ecotourism, ecotourists, new york times, new york times travel, travel journalism, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 3 teaches the reader how to identify and research the audience for eco-tourism. Bonnie Tsui, a writer at the New York TImes Travel section, offers insight to what ecotourists are looking for. According to Tsui’s research ecotourists are,
“looking for two things: access to unique areas that most tourists can never visit, and a way to improve the life of the people and places they do visit.”
Coincidentally travel writers seem to be seeking similar experiences. Ecotourism maybe a way for the travel writer to gain that unique perspective and story.
