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.
The current issue of Sports Illustrated (Nov. 2), which was clearly put together before the weekend, features a New York Met on the cover. And not just any Met, but Daniel Murphy, the second baseman whose two errors in two consecutive World Series games largely contributed to the Mets' defeat. The headline? "The Amazin' Murph."
The first thing I learned last week at TBEX, the national conference of travel bloggers, is that instead of being crass and saying you want to learn to make money from your blog, you say: "I want to learn to monetize my blog."
The second thing I learned is that in order to monetize my blog I pretty much have to change who I am. Not a lot of time at the conference was spent talking about content, but when the subject came up, it became clear that a blog should contain material that people are looking for. And in travel, that means tips and information, not observations and musings. Also, more people are looking for information on Las Vegas, Nevada, than on Las Vegas, New Mexico, and my philosophy as a travel writer - which I once wrote on a chair in a bookstore in Blytheville, Arkansas - has long been "celebrate the unsung."
This is partly why I'm no longer a newspaper travel editor, newspapers being as hungry for readers as bloggers are. But the beauty of blogs is that you're your own editor, which means that I can still write my reflections on less visited places. And, in a perversely satisfying (and non-monetizable) synchronicity, my blog will be less visited too. It's just like high school: The kids who are different are rarely popular.
My most interesting encounter at TBEX has been with a woman who traveled to see the Black Madonna in Czestochowa for her Mary Blog.
Port security requested ID as I drove in to TBEX. "Do you have any weapons?" the officer asked me. "Any ex-wives in the trunk?"
Yesterday a PR person sent me an email: "Hi Tom, As you plan your Thanksgiving wine stories..." And I thought to myself: How did she know?