User:Writing Girls/sandbox

= Travel Journalism =

Introduction
Journalism is the activity of gathering and presenting news and information to the audience and masses. There are so many fields in journalism such as travel journalism. Travel journalism is an adventurous field which penetrates the nature, places, and spots around the world. It is an important medium of information that shrinks with globalization. It goes beyond writing reviews of festivals, museums, monuments or hotels and rejects biased information to describe each of these things mean to the culture and importance of places journalists visit. Furthermore,It informs and encourages people to do it a particular destination: where to stay, what to eat, what to go and see, etc. Travel journalism appeals to travelers - those who genuinely understand other cultures, traditions, and people.

Notable Writers


Notable writers in travel journalism include professionals who have worked in this area of journalism for years and have sustained themselves with a high professionalism to the public. Not to confuse with travel writers, travel journalists have not necessarily published in their area of expertise, but rather report through different media news, information or experiences about the places they visit. These people also have direct relationships with different news organizations, such as newspapers and broadcast media. Different top 10 lists such as one done by Forbes’s magazine and Matador Network show a list of the most favored, both by the press industry and by the common public, travel journalists of the contemporary society.

Peter Greenberg
Peter Greenberg is a multiple Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and producer. He is recognized as America’s most “honored and respected” front-line travel news journalist. Greenberg is known in the travel industry as “The Travel Detective”, as long as he works as Travel Editor for CBS news. Widely known for his public TV show "The Travel Detective" with Peter Greenberg, a 27 episode series that looks to inform audiences with travel tips and news, and behind the scenes to destinations not usually found in traditional guidebooks. He also host a radio show and PBS television specials called The Royal Tour, where he has hand-to-hand journeys in countries with its head of state.

Seth Kugel
Seth Kugel is a contributing travel journalist for The New York Times,  he is best known for his Twitter page @TheFrugalTraveler, where he uploads photo content and short descriptions of the places he visits. He has described himself in his page as both a freelance journalist and a travel journalist, being the host of two popular YouTube channels: “Amigo Gringo” and “Globally Curious”. Kugel has published two books which related to his experiences when traveling, being these: “Nueva York: The Complete Guide to Latino Life in the Five Boroughs” and “Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious”. He studied political science at Yale University, winning a 100 dollar prize for the best senior essay in comparative government, and then continuing his studies at the Harvard Kennedy School for a Master of Public Policy degree, specializing in immigration policy.

Johnny Jet
Johnny Jet is a Connecticut-born travel journalist mostly recognized for his blog https://www.johnnyjet.com/, a website where, according to him, “travel experts share their tips and expertise to make you the expert”. Johnny Jet started the website for personal use, as a competition with his friends to see who earned the most travel miles, Jet won the bet. The site then grew to a platform with hundreds of writers and subscribers, and he started posting not only travel stories, but also reported as a journalist informing on the real views of the remote places he also visited. The website gave him a spot on Forbes’s Magazine Top 10 Travel Influencers for 2017.

SATW Foundation Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition
SATW or in other words Society of American Travel Writers Foundation holds Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition annually for past 34 years. There are 24 different kinds of categories in the competition such as: travel photography, travel videography, blogs and so on. The competition is held electronically, by the use of a special platform, called Better BNC Media Awards Platform. The only limitation with the competition is that people who entry must definitely be from North America. The winners are usually announced in the last week of September, with different category prizes which add up to almost 20000 dollars every year.

NATJA Awards Competition - North American Travel Journalists Association
The North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) honors the best of the works in the field of travel journalism for almost 25 years. The competition is called NATJA Travel Media Awards Competition and the winners are selected for their outstanding work in various fields such as photography, creative story-telling, creation of valuable online content and so on. There are several winners chosen on the special event planned by NATJA. According to North American Travel Journalists Association the main goal of holding this competition every year is to promote travel journalism as much as possible.

Concerns
A Study done my Dr.Folker Hanusch, a former journalist and now a professor,  shows several concerns that have been raised from travel journalism. The field of travel journalism is being highly neglected, although news media is requesting more soft news than before (Folker Hanusch, 2009). The increase of the lifestyle section has become more popular and in consequence there are cutbacks in international reporting and especially in travel journalism. Newspapers argue that travel journalism is expensive and also lacks attention from buyers. Other concerns about travel journalism are that stories focus only on the historical aspects of the destination. Instead of having a real insight and interviews from locals, they use a lot of description to advertise a place and leave the audience with only that specific information. (Thomas Swick, 2001).

Difference from Travel Writing
Travel journalism and travel writing are similar but not the same. They are a form of personal writing. Both have as main objective to give tips and information to the readers about places they dream of visiting. Their main difference is the approach they take. Travel writing appeals to tourists, while travel journalism appeals to travelers helping the reader to understand the culture and importance of a specific place. In other words, travel writing focus more on advertising the place for tourists, they do not offer much investigate information about the place they are unlike travel journalism that focuses more on fully explain the culture of a place with accurate information so that readers can really understand it.