Travel Blog

The freelancer who sent me my first submission as travel editor, and subsequently became a good friend, e-mailed me the other day and said that, after more than two decades of freelance writing, she is thinking of going back to school.

Over the years she has published three books and appeared in magazines like Granta. I accepted every story she sent me, and barely changed a word in any of them. So the problem isn't with her writing; it's with the editors of magazines. And it's not a question of getting rejected, but rather of being ignored.

She listed the magazines - a mix of print and online - to which she's submitted and from which she's heard nothing. "Freelancing is getting ridiculous," she wrote.

With all the laid-off journalists, the field is a lot more crowded today, and with e-mail it's much easier to submit (and, you would think, send a reply). But is the over-population of freelancers so great that editors no longer have the time to discover talent? Has the glut of writers caused editors to shut out unfamiliar names and to give assignments only to people they know? (Even though, with Google, it's easy to find out who the unknown are.)

My friend will make a fine academic, but her new career will be a loss for readers. And it will mean that the editors have won.