Editors can be very wary of freelances who appear to plugging a place off the back of a freebie. But if there is a newsworthy angle covered off the back of a freebie, they may go for it.

What matters to them is the story – as with other areas of journalism, not plugging a particular destination or whatever.

Simon Calder (Independent travel editor as is or was, sorry I may not be up to date on this) pays his way, as do, as I understand it, many other “leading” travel journalists. They aren’t producing some tick-box piece on how good a hotel is, they are giving a reader latest info on where they have been and hopefully a good read.

The challenge for freelance travel journalists is to make their trips pay – so if they have to go to say Barcelona, then they try and sell more than one piece to cover what they have shelled out to get there. I wrote a piece about this for Press Gazette once, http://www.freelancewritingtips.com/2008/02/thinking-of-tra.html

As for would a journalist slate a place that has given them a freebie, yes they would. I certainly did – way back when I went on a maiden flight from Birmingham to New York with BA and then wrote that not enough people were using BA and I could see why. I wasn’t invited back on any press trips, funnily enough.

Seriously, don’t take comments on a journalists’ forum made in the spirit of helping members as some snapshot representing a whole genre of journalism, it just isn’t so…

But it is a fact that, quite opposite to guidebooks, travel sections in newspapers offer coverage in return for writer freebies as standard practice. (Though ’tis also true that [some of the] writers still have to compete for the right to have *their* idea, their “sponsored coverage”, make the weekend pages.)

Is this not a working definition of advertorial? It is if we assume that writers on freebies aren’t completely free to write what they like, as you suggest in your original piece.

On your previous comment…

Are you suggesting, for example, that the entire Travel section of the Saturday Guardian is advertorial?

http://twitter.com/hackneye/statuses/940686258

Is that journalism?

Indeed, but in my experience guidebook publishers have *very* strict rules on what writers may or may not accept; and, even more importantly, the terms on which you may accept *anything*. No reputable guidebook company would swap an author freebie for guaranteed editorial space. Period. That’s almost the polar opposite of how newspapers operate.

> isn’t it the case that when you look in a newspaper and see ‘Hotel Review’, you’re expecting a fair and balanced piece of journalism

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d answer that “no”. Unless I see it in black-and-white that the writer paid for his/her own trip and stayed anonymously (like, IIRC, TimeOut print in their food guides), I always assume it’s a puff-piece. That’s not to say there isn’t good travel journalism out there (there is); it’s just that I start from the assumption that it’s PR and hope to be surprised. When I can be bothered to plough through the supplements, which is ever more rarely these days.

> I think articles like that should be labelled as such. Advertorial, ’sponsored by’, whatever.

Who do you think pays for the whole supplement? The advertisers finance the lot. They’d have to print that disclaimer on the front of every weekend supplement, every weekend, which I guess would deter the readers just a little. Find an honest travel editor at a national, and I’m sure s/he’d happily admit that without the advertisers, s/he’d have no job. The supplement wouldn’t exist. So, who’s the supplement for? (I should add, though, that there are some excellent “consumer” columnists in those weekend travel sections, too. All those advertiser-funded destination puff-pieces help pay for those, which definitely works in a reader’s favour.)

All this is IMHO of course. I think your instincts on this issue are spot on. Maybe I’m just a little more cynical?

On point 1, I’d argue that if mainstream travel journalism is, as you put it, “an extension of the travel PR industry”, then I think articles like that should be labelled as such. Advertorial, ’sponsored by’, whatever.

Come to think of it, I have seen pieces like that in national press. So it shows they’re not afraid to show it. And I’m not entirely against it either — especially when it’s advertorial and sponsored supplements that provide a huge chunk of revenue for a struggling print industry.

But isn’t it the case that when you look in a newspaper and see ‘Hotel Review’, you’re expecting a fair and balanced piece of journalism based on the experience of staying somewhere?

By making the reviewers known, you defeat the point completely.

On point 2, I agree with you — some guidebooks are very good. And the logic of not printing crap reviews is a sensible one that I admit I didn’t really consider. But still, we’re never quite sure who is contributing, and who they’re, for want of a better phrase, in bed with.

I’d pick you up on 2 points, though.

1. You’re, alas, completely missing the point of what “mainstream” travel journalism is *for*. (By mainstream, I mean for UK national papers.) Mainstream travel journalism is an extension of the travel PR industry: it’s there to *sell you holidays*. These glossy features aren’t designed to give you a critical view over a place, restaurant, or hotel. They’re there to make you want to go there. So, in that sense, your point is moot. It doesn’t need to be “honest” because that isn’t its remit; its remit is to sell, in a well-written way; they neither invite nor deserve “trust”. If you want honest travel journalism from a consumer angle, you need to check the consumer-focused columns that all major travel supplements contain. If you want more of a “travel writing” take, buy a book or a magazine (though chunks of many of these are also given over to PR puff-pieces). And the answer to your guess (“I bet in the staff rooms they’ll have a list of which rooms have people paying ‘media rate’”) is… “of course they do”!

2. You cite: “Straight hotel ‘reviews’ are pretty rare in travel journalism…” Not true: pick up a good guidebook. They’re the best places to go for the kind of honest, journalistic hotel reviews you’re looking for. (With the proviso that most won’t bother with lists of hotels that are crap – paper costs after all. They just won’t include them.) I’ve looked over countless hotels for the guidebooks I’ve written, usually anonymously, but even when I have declared myself I’ve not hesitated to write something harsh, or omit the place altogether if that’s what it deserves.

(BTW, which forum were you on? I’d be interested to see the original thread. If you don’t want to publish it, email me.)