How do travel journalists actually make money?

For the course News Industry 3.0 I have interviewed nine travel journalists in the past month. They work for either newspapers, magazines, websites, as a freelancer or blogger. Not only were they from The Netherlands, but also from the U.S. and India. However, I not gonna mentoin any names since some of them wish to stay anonymous.

In 30 minute interviews I asked these people questions about what they do in a regular workweek (which does not exist for travel journalists, as I found out), how they make money and how they feel about the rise of free travel information and journalism on the internet. This blogpost is a summary of my most interesting findings.

First of all, it was interesting to see that travel journalists come from various backgrounds: ICT, law, human resource and business amongst them. Only a few actually had a background in studying journalism. The reason that made them become a travel journalist was basically the same for everyone: because they were tired of their old careers and wanted to do something they really enjoyed.

When I asked people if they could describe a regular workweek for me, they usually laughed. Most of them do not have 9 to 5 job, yet some of the interviewees have some sort of a steady workweek. When the journalists are traveling, they are working constantly as they are always searching for special items, people to interview or taking photographs (in some cases). This goes for all categories of journalists. When they are not traveling, the activities vary per category.People who work at magazines and newspapers spend a lot of time at their desks editing and putting together issues. Freelancers are busy with selling their articles, getting new assignments, generating ideas, administrative tasks, preparing trip and of course writing and editing their articles.

One of the most interesting things that came up with this questions is that people in online media see activities surrounding social networks and online communities, as work-activities. Blogging, message boards, twitter, reading other blogposts, responding to blogposts or “engaging with everyone else that is in your online community” as one blogger called it, are part of the daily work-activities.

The main issue questioned in my research is the possibility to generate revenues from working as a travel journalist. The results are mixed: some succeed in doing this, others are less successful. The only people who earn a steady income from working as a travel journalist are employed in the established print media. Freelancers always have more uncertainty in their income, it varies from time to time and per assignment. However, the freelancers I interviewed did not have much trouble in selling their stories and getting enough assignments. Yet, one freelancer mentioned that he could only live from his activities as a travel journalist because he did not have a family or high fixed costs.

People in online media have the most trouble in generating revenues from their activities. All of them do generate some revenues, but not enough to live from and as a result they have to be involved in secondary work activities. For some blogging is the secondary activity, next to working at a university or in IT for example. However, almost all of them are in the middle of trying to monetize their online activities as a travel journalist, for example through e-books, travel items, advertisements and links.

The possibilities of online media to generate revenues are not so big at the moment, yet all of the people I interviewed perceived it as possible to make money with online travel journalism. But nobody really had a clear idea of how this was supposed to happen.

People involved in online media are trying to find ways to do this and the internet is also an interesting medium for freelancers to sell their products. Although none of them actually wrote for online media, they all had a personal website on which they sold their article and photography. Furthermore, the freelancers acknowledged that they make extensive use of online media to research their travels and that they would also like to write for online media. The only condition is being paid for it, which is not the case in general at the moment. The attitude towards online media by freelancers was not positive when it comes to their photography. As a lot of print media now use internet databases for pictures and the freelancers increasingly have a hard time to sell theirs. Also there is always the danger of unauthorized use of their pictures on the internet.

The people who were most pessimistic about the possibilities of online media to generate revenues, were employed in established print media. The magazines they worked for also publish a website, but this is not making them any money. Instead, it is only costing them money and they have not found a way to make their websites profitable. What is more is that they see the readerships of their print publications decline, probably losing readers to free online media.

A particular feature to the field of travel journalism is the practice of sponsorships. What I have concluded from my interviews is that sponsorships are almost a necessity for travel journalists. Those employed in the established print press or as freelancer all accept sponsorships. This can range from a free airline tickets or accommodation, to press trips organized by a national tourism agency. A freelancer explained that he would not be able to write articles about far away countries without sponsored transport and accommodation, as a ticket to Buenos Aires for example costs around 1000 euros, whilst one sold article generates about 1300 euros. Thus, it just not profitable to be a travel journalist without sponsorships.

All journalists making use of sponsorships emphasized that this does not interfere with the content of the articles. Often they only note that, for example, KLM flies you to Calgary for a certain price, in a special text box at the end of an article. However, I did not analyse articles on content to see if this is actually true.

The acceptance of sponsorships is not very common amongst bloggers or on travel websites. In the first place do bloggers not get offered that many sponsorships. It seems that they are out of the network of contacts at travel agencies and airlines, as sponsorships are seem like a personal favor of travel companies to journalists that they know or that have written for the company. Another possibility could also be that travel companies do not the perceive the potential audience reach of travel websites and blogs very big, but this is only speculation.

The second point made by bloggers about accepting sponsorships is that companies often want to interfere with content. One blogger was even offered by sponsors to write blogposts for her website, in which they extensively linked to company websites. Bloggers are not very keen on interference with content and like to keep their independence, thus they do not accept sponsorships such as these. Which is not in line with the general idea that the internet, blogs or amateur journalism is unreliable or not independent. In fact, one could pose that most bloggers and online travel journalists might be more independent than offline travel journalists.

Finally, people employed in the print media and people involved in online media are juxtaposed when sharing their opinion about amateur news makers. People of the established print media and the freelancers all feel that they offer much more quality in their articles than amateur travel writers and that they do not feel threatened by them because of this. They also felt that because of the better quality by professional travel journalists, print travel journalism will not disappear. Reviews or travelogues written by amateur are read for other purposes, according to them amateur travel journalism is used for orientation on destinations whilst people turn to print media by professionals if they want to read reliable information. Also they felt that articles do not read comfortably on a screen and that print media still had an advantage there over online media.

Travel journalists of online media did not share this opinion at all. They felt that the assumption made by print travel journalists that they offer better quality, was based on nothing and that the amateur travel journalist is being severely underestimated by print journalists. The common notion amongst travel journalists of online media was that it is a positive thing that everyone can be published, found and read on the internet and that writing good articles or taking good photographs is not restricted to people in print. The great thing about the internet, in their view, is that if you are good, you will surface, get more readers and maybe even start to make money out of it.

It was interesting to see that people in offline media and people in online media are so opposed to eachother when it comes to certain issues, whilst it is known for a long time now that convergence between several media platforms is an ongoin development that will not stop in the near future. Thus, it is likely that people will have to work together in the future at some point and it seems to me that by then they should have cleared their differences.

Overall I enjoyed interviewing these people a lot and found this project a good research experience, although the practice of travel journalism has lost a lot of its romance for me now

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