Travel Blog

There has been a wave of sympathy for National Geographic since news was announced of the turmoil and layoffs there. While part of the marketplace, National Geographic always seemed to hold itself above the fray, immune to the crassness and duplicity of many organizations in the publishing business. Yet National Geographic Traveler is the only magazine that has ever willfully inserted a fabrication into one of my stories.

It was a piece about Warsaw. When I pitched the idea, I mentioned that I had taught English in the city in the early ’80s, and written a book about Poland. This was not enough, I was told; in order to work for National Geographic Traveler, my story had to have a “personal quest.” OK, I told them, I’ll try to get into the prison where my wife was born.

I traveled to Warsaw in June of 2011. The story was published in August, 2013. Over those two years the story – along with countless emails – passed back and forth between me and my editor, until, finally, it no longer resembled the story I had written. The personal quest, which they had been so insistent upon, took a back seat to attractions for tourists. I was told to bring out more of the “romance” of Warsaw. I tried to explain that Warsaw, unlike Paris, or Prague, is not a romantic city. It seemed that the reality of the place was less important than an airbrushed portrait that the magazine could present to its readers.

Or maybe its advertisers. When I received the last of many rewrites I was shocked to find that it had me walking into a hotel and looking for a bar that I had never heard of. (Though I proclaimed, in this new version, that it was one of Warsaw’s famous watering holes.) I emailed back my objections and was told by my editor that she had been in Warsaw and had enjoyed a drink in the bar, which was situated in the city’s most luxurious hotel. I told her that no Poles I knew went there, and urged her to replace it with the popular place – a 24-hour beer and vodka joint across the street – that I had written about in my original story. She didn’t, and I assumed her decision was based on hopes of getting the luxury hotel to advertise. Instead, she got me to end my relationship with National Geographic.