Starting from common sense: isn’t there lots of people who would love to be a travel writer? To be able to go from one place to the other, and being paid for this, is something truly enviable. Unfortunately, things sometimes are not so simple or pretty. Every time I read the phorum or blogs that gather travel writers or journalists -particularly freelance in english language media- I find an aboundance of complaints. That the payment is low; that there’s more marketing and less journalism; that the good times are gone… Any journalist knows that his job is quite conditioned by advertising, the incomes of the media and the attractiveness of the section you work in. And apparently, the media’s travel sections are more read by advertisers and actors of the tourism sector than by ordinary readers. Which would explain, partially, why the “media readers” choose the Internet to inform themselves about destinations. The reason: they can talk directely to other travelers and tourists without necessarily having to undergo the media’s filters and the travel companies’ marketing areas.

Let’s return to travel writers. Some days ago, The New York Times published an interesting article about the problems of being a travel guides writer. The core issue: this is work, not a leisure travel. So, everything you do when you travel in such conditions is… move around the places that will be useful to develop a travel guide that’s helpful to other travelers. That’s not what we see as usual in a travel, where we rather assume we’re relaxed and move from on place to the other without hurry or problems.

Do we move without hurry and carelessly around the city? I’m afraid this form of tourism we have incorporated as “what we do when we travel”, is quite far from many real travel practices. More likely, when we arrive to a city, we usually have so little time, we move frenetically around in order to see everything our guide has marked down as “must sees”. And it’s not only during the day, at night we also have to go out, take pictures, walk around, check out the “local environment”. At the end, when we return from our vacations, we’re more exhausted than when we left. Although, of course, strangely happy.

Could it be that, in fact, practices generally associated to travel writers are increasingly becoming part of our routines as travelers? When we travel, we produce more things in order to publish them in the Internet: pictures, travel notes, videos, etc. I know many of these supports were already common to travelers, taking notes is a travel tradition of many centuries; and taking photos, of many decades. But there’s a more clear idea of producing “private” and “public” versions of our travels, something common for a tourism journalist, but not so much for the rest of us. Of course, these “public” versions of our trips are possible thanks to new forms of Internet publications, such as blogs, phorums, etc.

Will we end up as travel writers, but without working in a traditional media?

And what about the problems of travel writers, finally? Better read the New York Times note (you’ll need to register in the site, for free, first)

The New York Times article was originally seen at Travel Writers.