My college-bound daughter asked me about a career in journalism, as I am a J school graduate. While I see value in solid writing skills, I would not currently recommend a journalism degree.

With outlets such as the Huffington Post asking bloggers to write for free, bloggers will continue to be viewed as second class citizens. What other industry expects their content providers to work for free?

I do have to disagree with Gary’s point that “They were quite successful at “real jobs” which is how they translated it into success at blogging.”. Sure, a few like Gary and I have this background, but timing had as much to do with it as anything.

Many successful travel bloggers, ( & regular bloggers and hot journalists) are 20-somethings not long out of school. They just happen to be savvy, passionate, risk-taking digital natives who understand the new media/social media/new economy dynamic and how to take advantage of it.

In these economic reset and exponential times, this trend will continue and I have been amazed at how many new travel blogs have entered the scene since we began our world tour in 2006.

I love Chris Elliott’s classic “Can You Trust a Travel Writer”:

http://www.elliott.org/the-tra.....el-writer/

In my short time in the travel industry I’ve found out that money is the key influence for travel journalists and bloggers & both are usually not traveling very much. It’s hard to be on the move and write plus do all the other keys that are necessary today from editing video to Facebook.

Quality will mean different things to different people & interestingly, it’s not the best written blogs ( in travel or other realms) that are the top blogs necessarily. Same is true about the drivel in popular traditional media pieces. Yawn.

SEO, Social media, gaming things like Alexa ratings, friends in the right places, good design, PR, popular videos and photos, unique perspective, multi-authored content and more things play a part.

I didn’t set out to be a travel writer or a business, plus I have done absolutely zero SEO on our site and never got around to writing one press release or getting my media kit/press page up. We’re too busy traveling the world & educating our child.

Yet, I was interviewed in the the New York Times, write for the Huffington Post, called a “travel guru” by the UK Guardian, have had over 3 million views from our Soultravelers3 Youtube videos and am authoring a book that my agent thinks will be a best seller etc. etc.

Funny thing is, I didn’t go after any of the above, they came to me out of the blue. I’m still amazed & stunned.

I think the debate between travel writers and travel bloggers is a mute one today and that trend will continue. Writing is only part of the job today and one does not have to go to journalism school to be a success. Read “Here Comes Everybody”.

The good news? The readers get to decide and there are many niches in travel. Both bloggers & journalists should pay attention to digital nomad/location independent style travel that is a fast growing trend that will have a big impact on travel now that people can work and school any where.

Travel bloggers have let out the secret that travel doesn’t have to be expensive & many people are more interested in that than long pretty prose articles about holidays & vacations that will cost a fortune for a week or two of fun.

It is a dying industry.

Just because some people are able to keep getting work doesn’t deny the general problems which the industry as a whole are facing. Publications are going out of business, rates for freelances have gone down, staff journalists are being fired, newspapers are hiring few full time travel editors. I don’t think any of that can be denied. For every tweet I hear about a writer getting a great deal like yours, you see many more complaining about low rates or the lack of work. One example doesn’t disprove a general proposition. It might not be dead yet, but it is dying.

I’m not even sure why that is a controversial statement given how overwhelming the data is.

Certainly as things get worse people will still be employed. Good, experienced writers will still be able get work even as the ship is sinking. If you can get $2000 for a story that takes two days to write, then all the power to you. I have no problem with writers. I someone is willing to give you money to do something you love, you should take it. If someone offered me that much money for two days work I’d take it too.

You are also confusing what I mean by “old” vs “new” media. It isn’t just a matter of having things published on the internet vs being published on dead trees. I’m talking about a business model. I also know that the lines between old and new aren’t always so bright for writers. There are many writers who either have or are employed by old media companies who have blogs, several of which I think do a great job of blogging and really get the new medium. Lara, I think the recent year long project you started is great and something more bloggers should be looking at as a model.

In the long run, I do not think business of providing words in exchange for cash is something which is going to be sustainable. The supply of people who want to be travel writers is growing and the rates are dropping. They are never going to come back up. You might have gotten $2,000 for two days work, but if the publisher is savvy, they will know they can probably hire someone for much less next time. Even if the quality of what you produce is far above average, the decline in advertising revenue means they will have no choice but to cut rates.

I think one point that hasn’t really been discussed here is the role social tools like Twitter and StumbleUpon serve to let the rubbish float to the surface — or at least be continually tossed at your window. Twitter in particular, is a tool ideal for circumventing the fact that no search engine is ever going to rank some of the dribble that is being written. I regularly see travel bloggers (I’m sure this is the same in other fields as well) with tens of thousands of followers tweeting complete trash (snatch from Wiki, add a sentence and post) — I’ve stopped following most, but the retweeting brings it back to my feed over and over. Why do people retweet inane and factually incorrect rubbish? Mutual back scratching perhaps? beats me — but they do — hourly.

As per Lara, I don’t agree that freelancing is dying at all — it perhaps is more difficult, especially in the US, to get a gig, but it isn’t at death’s door. Especially if you look at the non-English press: take Thailand for example — 2009 saw the launch of 39, yes 39, new magazines. Not all travel related of course, but in some places, print continues to flourish.

Yes there’s no shortage of dire writing — but I don’t get too wound up about it anymore — unfollow, cancel subscription, de-friend — it’s easy!

David, you’ve really excelled your grumpy self this time – hilarious!

Matthew, beautifully written response too.

Totally agree with you also, Hal and Kevin.

Karen, I think you’re dead right about the role of connections and SEO skills over the ability to produce quality content – I find it very sad.

Guido makes an insightful point about another big difference, that writers are “commissioned”, a point I also made on a recent post (was it yours Jeremy?) when a blogger (Pam from Nerds Eye View perhaps?) expressed frustration with the use of “professional” to describe writers but not bloggers.

For me, the differences between bloggers and writers are all of these things – that they are commissioned, that writing is how they make their living, that their work is edited, and – something often overlooked – that they are trained in and (morally/professionally) bound by ethics and law – all of which are things that go with being involved in any ‘industry’.

While I love reading a whole bunch of blogs I visit regularly, I would have a lot more respect for more of the blogs out there if they were more ‘professional’ – better edited mainly, but commissioned would also be nice, because I’m really getting fed up with bloggers who are constantly plugging particular hotels, or travel gear, or even particular PR people. While I respect their honesty and appreciate the new requirements in the US for them to do so, it’s just getting really tiresome. More models need to be explored.

Lisa, if pressed I’d say I consider myself to be a professional travel writer who also blogs. Because when I’m busy as a writer, it’s my blog that gets neglected because my focus is on the work that pays. Interestingly, this year Terry and I are being paid by HomeAway Holiday Rentals to both blog and write – they see value in both print and social media.

I studied writing (and filmmaking) at university and I have been getting paid to write for over 20 years. I have a colossal amount of respect for the journalistic profession. I love great journalists and admire what they do. I also enjoy reading blogs, but I don’t remember great blog posts in the way I recall a brilliant piece from Vanity Fair or the New Yorker or a superb Australian political paper that died some years ago called The National Times.

I know people like Gary like to think the professional writer/journalist is a dying breed, but I just got paid $2000 to write a story that took me two days to do, and I had three good commissions come in last week (that sadly I don’t have time to accept), so print is not dead yet.

I also think Gary has no real idea about what we actually do. I’m hardly ‘old media’ (gosh, this just reminds me of the tedious film versus video argument of 10-15 years ago), I also write for digital and have written everything from walking tours for SONY PSP to content for travel sites – none of which would be considered ‘old media’ by traditional journalists. And I bet David, Matthew, and others above have too. The generic and formal boundaries are a lot more blurred than Gary thinks – once again, the difference lies in things like editing, commissioning, ethics/law, rather than print (old) versus digital (new) media.

In the end it’s all about content, and it doesn’t matter what results those search engines produce when a reader googles, if the content is not well-written and compelling, they’re not going to stick around.

Call me old fashioned but I still enjoy reading CN Traveller in print (gasp!) because I find the articles to be informative and well written. Equally I enjoy reading blog posts from Lara Dunston, in fact I would love to hear her thoughts on this topic as I have seen her described as both travel writer and blogger.

I have to agree with David and don’t think he was being harsh about the Dubai article. The same scrutiny should apply!

Maybe there is hope for journalists yet – BBC report today says youngsters in the US dropping blogging in favour or “shorter and more mobile forms of communication”…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8497427.stm