The career of Harold Evans, who died Wednesday at the age of 92, was so rich and distinguished that his role as founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler got little ink in his obituaries.
The magazine debuted in 1987, when travel writing was entering the last years of its heyday. It took as its motto “Truth in Travel” and declared that its writers would not accept free trips. This principled approach sparked a conversation throughout the industry, causing a number of publications – including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where I became the travel editor two years later – to change their policies.
In addition to ethics, Evans ushered in – or more accurately prolonged the periodical life of – fine writing about place. He came from a country with a long tradition in the genre, and he got some of the more celebrated contemporary writers as contributors. Condé Nast Traveler wasn’t Granta – which discovered new voices like Jonathan Raban, Colin Thubron, Isabel Hilton, Ryszard Kapuściński – but it was a vast improvement over Travel + Leisure.
After Evans’ departure, the magazine became enamored of the good life (i.e., a prisoner to advertising), and the fresh reporting and colorful writing gave way to service-oriented articles. Instead of enlightening people about the world it told them where they could go for vacation. Two years ago, the international and U.S. editions merged, creating an Anglo-American consumer magazine for status-conscious tourists. But in the beginning, Condé Nast Traveler was that rare thing: an intelligent, sophisticated, unpredictable glossy.
