Articles > The Best Worst Job in the World

Any travel writer who stays home long enough to actually converse might tell you that they would be wealthy if they had a dollar for every time someone insisted, 'You've got the best job in the world.' After 16 years as a full-time travel journalist-photographer, my response to this is, well, absolute ambivalence. Travel writing is the worst best job in the world.

Like most professional writing, good travel journalism hinges on research — in this case in the form of the brutally truncated excursion known as a 'famil' (as in familiarisation) trip. The writer who has turned the mild vice of wanderlust into the relentless habit of a livelihood must ricochet perpetually from writing desk to departure lounge to purported 'paradise,' then back. At the allegedly ‘paradisical’ destination they spend a day, two at most, amid the mountains, ruins or museums that they long may have yearned to waste days, if not weeks, among. Do the whole Hermitage in a half-day, or do it on your own dollar, is the message.

Of financial necessity, many research trips undertaken by travel journalists are subsidized by hosts such as airlines, hotels or tourism authorities. These organisations provide some complimentary services, although never money — at least to me. Hosted or not, the journalist's role remains that of travel critic, not PR person. The host's hope is that after a successful famil, readers, with their own wanderlusts duly stimulated, will book the destination or activities described by the journalist. Not all famils, however, are entirely 'successful' and the ethical journalist (who needs an equally ethical editor) will include reference to mangy sheets, crap-strewn beaches or xenophobic locals, as appropriate. Famil hosts, having no right of veto or even review of an article, soon understand that hosting doesn't mean hiring.

Well, that's the theory — and in most cases the practice. Some small magazines may cut a journalist's critical commentary, not because anyone is on the take from, say, the Lower Slobivian National Tourist Office, but because the magazine doesn't want to lose the advertising of the national carrier, Aero Slob. Travel journalists, be they freelance or staff writers, having built a body of experience and critical knowledge, are very keen to protect their reputations as independent commentators — in the same way as motoring writers, film reviewers and restaurant critics. To become known to good editors as a closet PR ensures that a writer’s future famils soon enough will be by bus to the dole office.

In the wake of a 'cash for comment' furore several years ago in Australia, when some of commercial radio's finest were accused of having their tongues in the till, so to speak, one major publishing group selectively introduced a policy of not running stories generated through hosted travel. Full transparency and disclosure, plus travel receipts, were required of freelance contributors — and presumably of staff. The policy, applied by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, implies that a writer who has accepted an airline ticket or hotel bed is no longer kosher.

'My only responsibility is the reader, not the providers of hosted travel,' says Susan Kurosawa, travel editor of the Weekend Australian. 'If I always wrote gush and was compromised by "free" travel, then the readers would not trust my byline — and I'd hardly have lasted more than 12 years in this role. Everything we write in my section is fair and objective; we simply can't be bought and I strongly resent any implication that this is the case. The view of the SMH and The Age seems to be that if a journalist is put in the way of a "freebie", he or she will turn into some sort of grateful groveller who will lose all sense of judgment and write gushy PR prose. So it's interesting that Fairfax thinks Sun Herald and Fin. Review travel editors are eligible for what they call "babysitting" but the broadsheet editors aren't.'

Many journalists and members of the travel industry believe that the policy of 'truth in travel' itself has become compromised. Syndicated or wire stories from overseas sources often appear in Australian publications of the 'sponsor-free' persuasion. Immediate past-President of the Australian Society of Travel Writers, Lee Atkinson, says she 'very much doubts' that these stories are all generated under the same constraints that apply to Australian contributors. Similarly, there are accounts of such publications requesting deals and upgrades from airlines, hotels and operators for their visiting journalists. So much for universal transparency and disclosure.

Debbie Hunter, Deputy Travel Editor of the Sun Herald comments, 'There are certain realities in producing a big colour section like ours on a limited budget. By disclosing that we "travelled courtesy of ..." we are being honest about that. The public aren't stupid. Neither are we. We risk losing readers if we don't uphold our ethical and professional responsibilities (I refer to the Code of Ethics of both the MEAA and the ASTW) to remain critical and objective.'

'It's an interesting time in the Australian travel publishing industry at the moment,' notes Lee Atkinson, referring to the launch of bright new publications like Fairfax's local version of Travel & Leisure and the independent Australian Traveller magazine (both with a 'no freebies' policy). 'It's giving the industry a long overdue shake-up, as they seem to be running longer, more intelligently-written stories. You get the sense that the writer has actually thought about the place.' Atkinson adds, 'But a hosted journalist could do the same. It's more about these magazines taking themselves seriously as a travel publication, rather than just a vehicle for advertising.'

'Longer, more intelligently-written stories'— the notion seems almost romantic, at least in travel writing in Australia. Way back when, I was inspired by, among others, the long travel essays that Jan Morris penned for Rolling Stone in the 1980s and for other publications. If she were writing in Australia today she'd be told by some publications to keep it under 1000 words, with 'more about shopping and tours, and go easy on the history bit' — and to throw in a good selection of pics. Free pics, most probably. The broadsheets, it's true, would give her up to 1800 words max and more intellectual leeway, but if writing for certain magazines she might be surprised to find a few sub-editor pars inserted in her elegant prose about a theme park or airline she may never have been near.

None of the above is inherently 'bad.' What it reflects, however, are practices that have led to a radical lowering of readers' expectations. We rarely open Australian travel pages with an anticipation of that quaint old experience,'a good long read.' Instead we find a functional read - consumer guidance to popular holiday destinations. Such writing is necessary and is the bread and butter of most travel journalists. At its best it is informative, entertaining and, yes, even critical. What it usually isn't is sustained, reflective, perhaps humorous, perhaps uncomfortable, well-honed destination writing. That there is now so little room for a good read in our DVD'd attention spans and our product-driven travel pages seems to me a loss.

The independent freelance travel writer who goes to exotic destinations on his or her own dollar might be an object of envy but, at Australian publication rates, is more likely a fictional character. To make a career of regularly spending thousands of dollars per research trip in order to generate a story that pays perhaps $700 is voodoo economics at its most exquisite.

Complain as we may, one doesn't enter freelance travel journalism expecting to have one’s complaints taken seriously (after all, it is 'the best job in the world'), or to earn an adult wage. At fifty cents a word and fifty bucks a photo (when they're not free), the freelance who boasts about a taxable income over $40,000 a year has been researching the mini-bar too long. A graduate's wage by retirement age would suffice.

So, what are the pay-offs for a travel writer? Some of the best grooves in my psyche have been carved by places I would never have seen if not invited there on assignment: I think of bays in Antarctica strewn with floe-ice like shattered china, or the soaring prayer in blue ceramic tiles that is ancient Esfahan. Or surfing the clean and scary-fast tubes of a Sumba reef. These little epiphanies - brushes with life, and occasionally with death - are their own reward. The sustaining pleasure remains, of course, in the two compulsions at the heart of this best worst job in the world: the travelling and the writing.

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