Chocolate travels
Posted: November 19, 2012 Contents: Chapter 3 | Tags: chocolate niche', chocolate travel, hotel chocolat, new york times, new york times travel, travel journalism, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 3 outlines several niches the travel journalist should consider when choosing a topic. One should consider chocolate. Check out this tidbit from travel.nytimes.com:
Hotel Chocolat’s union of tourism and agricultural development, specifically its devotion to all things cocoa, is part of a budding movement across the Caribbean. You might call it choco-tourism.
From Tobago to Dominica, Grenada to St. Vincent, the Caribbean cocoa industry, which has roots in colonial times, is being revitalized. This is excellent news economically: With free trade having all but destroyed the islands’ banana and sugar industries, fair-trade farming initiatives are a welcome boon.
One thing the chocolate traveler will have is energy.
Air and rail combo
Posted: November 19, 2012 Contents: Chapter 4 | Tags: air and rail combos, christine negroni, new york times, save time and money travel, travel column, travel journalism, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 4 encourages the travel journalist to investigate the misery of air travel. The travel column of nytimes.com offers travelers another route, take the train. According to an article by Christine Negroni, travelers in Canada, France, Germany, and Spain are all leading hubs for air and rail combo travelers. Negroni’s advice can save the traveler time and money.
Air travelers in Canada, France, Germany and Spain may increasingly find that they are doing part of their journey on the ground, as airlines work with rail companies to sell tickets for combined trips.
The road or roadless to adventure
Posted: November 5, 2012 Contents: Chapter 3 | Tags: adventure journalism, adventure writing, avery stonich, backcountry, outdoor industry association, road trip, roadless areas, travel adventure, travel journalism, travel research, travel writer, travel writing Leave a comment »Chapter 3 introduces adventure as an important niche topic for travel readers. Earlier this month, adventure travelers and consequently adventure writers received good news when the Supreme Court ignored a ruling that would allow individual states to downgrade protection on roadless(backcountry areas that have few roads or significant alterations other than trails) areas that may allow things like mining and deforestation in certain outdoor adventure areas. Avery Stonich of Outdoor Industry Association calls this effort or lack of a
major win, protecting these places for future generations.
Without these roadless areas there would be very little for the adventure audience to read about.
More to blogging
Posted: November 5, 2012 Contents: Chapter 5 | Tags: duct tape marketing, ducttapemarketing.com, john jantsch, search engine optimization, seo, travel blog, travel journalism, travel journalist, travel technology, travel writing Leave a comment »Getting published is no longer just about sending letters to magazine and newspaper editors. According to John Jantsch, an author and contributor at ducttapemarketing.com, blogging isn’t enough anymore either. Jantsch offers this advice on how to have an easily accessible optimized blog:
I believe the best approach currently and in the foreseeable future calls for a 2-prong strategy to content development that feeds both readers and spiders. I believe that we must create what I’m calling classes of content that address the growing demand for real-time updates and long-term sustainability. When I talk about classes I’m talking about how we build, display, link to and optimize our content. I believe we need develop content strategies along these two classes: attraction content and foundation content
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.
