These days a series of advertising spots about Peru, that seek to build a country-brand through the slogan “Peru. The Inkas country”, are being broadcasted in local television. This cut is an interesting one; first, because it privileges an area of this country that is precisely the one that gets most tourism. Of the three spots that I could watch, two are in the highlands -Puno and Cuzco/Machu Picchu- and one in the forest -and that one I barely saw it once, I don’t even remember what it was about. I wonder if this decision linked to the topic of country-brand is at all right, even when I assume there’s a good market study under these spots. Shoulden’t they emphasize other regions of Peru that have great tourism potential? I’m thinking Trujillo, with Chan Chan and the different huacas in the area; Kuelap; Lambayeque, with the Lord of Sipan tomb; Iquitos; Pucallpa; Mancora; Nazca; among other destinations. I know some will say: but, aren’t these destinations well known? The truth is, at least here in Argentina, only those of us who have visited these places have an idea of how interesting the north of Peru is. The problem is: is “The Inkas country” a slogan wide enough to include destinations that we associate to other precolombine cultures such as Chimu, Mochica, or Nazca and Paracas? It is clear that most of the tourists who think of Peru, they associate it with Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Now, well, is it necessary to advertise to reinforce this image? or should we make our bet to diversify the supply and help tourism in Peru lose its dependency on Cuzco?

By the way, the spots are frequently seen at National Geographic channel, on cable tv. If it’s going on any other channel, let us know.

For a long time, we’ve been used to a one direction type of information. The media presented articles, we read them and, at most, we could send a letter if we had any question. Interaction didn’t go beyond that. But in blogs, which usually allow comments, the situation is quite different.

Let’s take a note about some european destination, for example. The journalist made some previous research, travelled, told what he’d seen, and period. How he got there, is not part of the note; that is, certain production conditions were erased from the final text. If he’d gone there as part of his vacations, or if he was invited by some country’s tourism office or travel agency, that’s something we don’t see printed. In a way, that became part of the backstage, part of the note’s making of process readers didn’t have to know about.

With the arrival of blogs and comments spaces, these things have begun to change. If I wrote some entries dedicated to some european destination -hopefully soon, let me dream a little- good part of my reader’s questions would be, precisely, about that backstage. How much did the ticket cost, how did I find out, what guides and Internet sites I consulted, how to prepare for the trip, how much for the lodging, where did I stay…

If my answer was “I was invited by a travel agency, and I spent my time from tour to tour, all paid, and I have no clue about how much these things cost” -since, of course, I didn’t have to pay for them or even care about organising my trip- my experience of the place will lose sense for my readers.

Since I didn’t have to plan the trip as any other person has to, I’ll be unable to answer most of the commentators questions.

And here’s an interesting distance between graphic journalism, which doesn’t allow direct interaction with readers, and blogs which allow comments. The travel experience of the travel journalist who has someone else plan the trip for him, is not too interesting for the reader who wants to know more information to plan his own trip. And this is part of the process we’ll all have to learn: we are not able to provide answers to all questions, and without our readers help we wouldn’t be able to handle everything.

In the future, the most interesting travel stories will be those produced by our equals, other Net users. Like it or not, journalists and the tourism industry will have to get used to it. Because the travel experience is not only about experiencing the place; planning the trip itself is part of our questions and doubts.

Why are newspaper’s tourism supplements usually so bad? why do they praise that much to the destinations they visit? (with few excemptions) There are some reasons to undestand this topic.

Almost all of the trips tourism supplements journalists make abroad, at least in Latin America, are made thanks to the invitations of state organizations or private companies that want media to cover a specific destination. With the invitation they make it to the agenda of the publication and usually get a very favorable critic.

No one bites the hand of the one that feed him, people say. Of course, the editor can dare to publish something not so benevolent; in this case, there will be phone calls from embassies and companies asking questions for such a problem. For the media, by the way, it’s a way of having more notes, with a lower cost.

But, as you can see, the quality of the information delivered to reader is far from impartial. Whoever reads the information -although as I asked myself other times, I wonder how many people read tourism supplements with interest- is not assuming that the note responds to commercial criteria rather than the periodistic norms that rule other sections of the paper.

By the way, this topic of paid trips not only applies to tourism. It can also be seen at other sections, where trips to cover the events are usually paid by companies.

Can this all be changed? Is it possible for latin american journalists to recover control of the agenda of periodistic supplements? Unlikely. It’s necessary to count on sufficient funds to finance trips and covertures. And that only comes out of publicity. So, in the long run, the commercial department ends up taking control of the supplement’s agenda, again.

Anyways, we are going to have tourism supplements for a long time, among other things because they usually have many paid advertisements. Although, if we follow this path, shortly all tourism supplements will start carrying a headnote that states “advertising space”.

In the imaginary of journalism -at least in well done journalism- there’s always the idea that one doesn’t have to innocently believe in what the other says. That facts have to be contrasted. Checked with other sources. Things others tell us respond to their own interests, and as journalists, our interests are: we care about finding the truth, showing what’s attractive, even when interviewed people don’t like it. It’s our note, not theirs.

Now, well, in this note published by the newspaper Clarin, in their travel supplement, the journalist does the exact opposite: she assumes as her own the whole imaginary of San Antonio de Areco, which tries to sell itself as some sort of origin of “authentic creolism”. Along the note, all the common places on Don Segundo Sombra -one of the main works on argentinean gauchesque- are repeated, thus reinforcing the imaginary that’s being tried to be sold to us, through markenting. As journalists, can we quietly accept that our note matches the same arguments that would sell in a touristic brochure? Obviously, not.

As journalists, weren’t we supposed to always question what we were told? It looks like travel supplements in Argentina follow the same path: too much publicity disguised as notes, but zero journalism. Is the same thing happening in the rest of Latin America? I guess I should start reading other newspapers online.

In a previous entry in my blog in spanish, I commented on a note of the travel supplement by argentinean newspaper Clarin about Potrero Funes, a locality of San Luis. The text is a praise to the location and one wonders where is the famous impartial position of the media. Now, I was browsing the Tourism supplement of the newspaper La Nacion, where a series of notes of -again, what are the chances?- San Luis were published.

The note is already titled as a gazette: “San Luis: defying the limits of the unknown” (in spanish only). Then, the note is a long series of praises, where there’s not even a trace of negativity. Journalism, it doesn’t look like it: there are no contrasting data, no sources cited, no features that distinguish this article from a press gazette.

In my other blog in spanish, I usually complain about how album reviews made by rock magazines never state a single bad launching. The same thing happens to me with tourism supplements: I never find an impartial evaluation of the destinations: there are no negative details or these are placed in the last paragraph. I understand that usually journalist that visit these locations are invited by the province’s tourism offices, or even by travel agencies and are conditioned many times by commercial agreements that the media where they work at have made. But it doesn’t sound very honest to seel this as “journalism”, it’s more a marketing or advertising space. I wonder if anyone might take seriously the recommendations of these newspaper’s travel supplements.

I also wonder if it wouldn’t be ethical to reveal to the readers who financed the journalist’s trip. I think it would be importat, to know from which perspective to read this kind of notes.

In the same marketing style, you can find notes here and here. In the case of the last cited note, that belongs to the newspaper Clarin, the first phrase seems directly dictated by a press agency: “the geography of Chaco is a fountain of life that doesn’t rest”. A remarkable revelation, considering that Chaco is one of the poorest provinces in Argentina, where between 1990 and 2001 24 out of every thousand newborn babies died, outnumbered only by Formosa and Tucuman provinces. This last information is provided by the INDEC, the Institute of Statistics and Census in Argentina. More information can be found here, in Excel format.