Travel Blog

This seems to be the season for anniversaries, so I'll add my own: Twenty years ago this week I became the second and - judging by the current decline - the last travel editor in the history of the Sun-Sentinel.

For many of my generation, Woodstock is an example of paradise lost. For me, that example is the American newspaper of the late 20th century.

The features editor and her assistant (an assistant features editor!) hired me because they were looking for a good writer. (A newspaper interested in writing!) I was given about $20,000 for travel and the same for freelance purchases. (Never much for luxury, I would find it impossible to spend all that money myself, and recruited colleagues to help with the travel.)

The profitability of not just the paper but the Travel section - all those Sunday ads - allowed me a certain amount of freedom (as did the fact that the specialty sections are an editor's lowest priority). After complaints from his office about my first few columns, I was left pretty much alone to do what I wanted with the section. I decided where I would travel, what I would write in my biweekly column, which freelance stories I would put on the cover. (I rarely allowed a wire story there.)

That autonomy lasted for 17 years, until the newspaper business started to fail and editors' perspectives dangerously narrowed. (Local and useful replaced worldly and interesting.) To paraphrase Evelyn Waugh on travel: I'm happy I put out a Travel section when the putting out of a Travel section was good.