Come January, Perceptive Travel web magazine will turn three. We’ll celebrate by going monthly from here on out and of course will give away some cool travel gear and books as prizes.
I started the publication three years ago as I watched a continuous decline in quality with travel print media. Some great magazines had gone under, newspapers were scaling back on thoughtful travel pieces, and “Top-10 whatever” lists were everywhere I looked. So I fought back instead of whining, creating a home for book authors to follow offbeat angles and write about things and places nobody else was covering.
Three years later, the print picture is even more grim. How bad is it? For a great rundown from an insider, see this World Hum interview with John Flinn, the resigning editor of the revered San Francisco Chronicle travel section. Even I was shocked by the number of respected, high-profile travel editors Flinn mentions who have either recently resigned or are on their way out. It’s ugly out there. And here’s the kicker:
I think the longer narratives that were the foundation of most newspaper travel sections are starting to fade away. Papers want more “top ten beaches”-style content, and lots of “charticles.” That’s not always a bad thing—there’s a lot of information that can be better conveyed in a list or a graphic than in a narrative. But I think there’s a growing assumption that readers don’t have the attention spans to wade through an 1,800-word travel narrative, no matter how well it’s written.
Well, we will continue to publish those 1,800-word narratives, the kind of articles that are meaty enough to make the “best travel writing anthologies” instead of being used to line bird cages. Despite conventional wisdom, our stats say real independent travelers—our audience—are still reading them. And we’ll continue to supplement that with interesting and thoughtful blog posts here from Sheila, Liz, and Antonia.
Thanks for hanging in there with us, supporting our advertisers, and allowing us to make it to the toddler stage.
Tim,
Congrats on your great work offering an outlet for independent and perceptive travel writers with something to say.
As you say — be it in print or online — much travel writing is designed for those with short attention spans and covers the superficial.
Fortunately there is still a vast audience out seeking good reads and you are helping feed this hunger.
Obviously I’m biased as one of Tim’s blog authors, but apart from that, I’m one traveler who very much appreciates his efforts on behalf of good travel writing and compelling stories from around the world.
Too many print-based writers are bemoaning the Web rather than appreciating its power, but Tim has the big picture about the Web’s fantastic opportunities for writers.
Thanks, Tim, for supporting this blog and for the great work you do with the “mother ship,” the Perceptive Travel webzine.
One of the reasons I read so many blogs is that there are fewer and fewer places to turn for 1800 word stories. If I’m sitting in or in the process of planning a trip to – oh, let’s say Chiang Mai, then a “36 hours in…” or “the top 10 best yadda yadda…” are useful reads. But more often than not, I’m NOT in Chiang Mai or Berlin or Bolivia. And I still want to read stories about those places. Thanks for making a place for those stories to live.
Happy Birthday, Perceptive Travel
Tim, my father often says that most of the mistakes in the world — whether it’s business or politics — happen because people lack imagination. I think that’s definitely true of bottom-line-minded types who own the newspaper industry.
One of the most popular blogs out there is Cocktail Physics (www.twistedphysics.typepad.com), which produces 2000-word essays _about physics_ on a weekly basis. Any average media tycoon would assume nobody has the time or interest to read that kind of thing, but it seems to prove — as does the success of Perceptive Travel — that what people really want is quality content. The reason they read shorter stuff is that a) that’s what they’re fed, and b) most of what’s out there is rubbish and you can only read so much of it at a time.
Long live Perceptive Travel!
Just discovered your site Tim and I like your straight-up viewpoints. I also dismay at the creeping death of the feature article, but it’s not unique to travel writing but rather a symptom of a more fundamental change in our media consumption (in my opinion). Blogs, RSS readers, Twitter, Youtube, newspaper websites, the BBC….we have more media at our fingertips than ever before, yet no more time to take it all in.
At our site we try to strike a balance – we publish Top 10s and other roundups for those people who want that sort of thing (and it makes great PR fodder as well) as well as longer, inspirational pieces. I think we’ve been reasonably successful at it, but we must remain mindful that our readers do fall into one or the other camps…this obviously impacts how the content is interlinked, site navigation, etc.
Anyway, I’m glad I found your site and I’ll definitely be back.