The Loneliness of the Lonely Planet Writer

April 15, 2008

Pity poor Thomas Kohnstamm. Retained by Lonely Planet to contribute to various of its much-read guidebooks, Kohnstamm found himself so underpaid and unloved that he had to resort to dealing drugs to make ends meet (as one does). He also found it convenient to write about Columbia without actually going there, thanks to the good fortune of an amorous liaison in San Francisco with a lady who happened to be an intern in the Columbian consulate.

travel-writers.jpgKohnstamm alleges, in a new book, that this is all par for course in the world of Lonely Planet travel writing.

Some years ago, Blade made overtures to write a Lonely Planet guide on Albania, a country he visited often for a few years. The idea was a good one, at least in so far as the fact that a Lonely Planet guide to Albania did not exist. But Blade swiftly realised that the remuneration proposed would not equate to the amount of sheer hard work involved, and so passed on the opportunity.

But on one trip to Albania, Blade encountered a comely young journalist who wanted to know all about Prague. As a man of the world, Blade was able to shed light on the city of Kafka, Hrabal and the Velvet Revolution. The journalist was delighted, for she was engaged in writing a travel piece about the city.

“You have been there, haven’t you?” enquired Blade.

“No, here in Albania we can’t afford to go anywhere,” replied the Sophia Loren lookalike. “We do all our articles from information on the internet.”

She did not, to Blade’s knowledge, supplement her meagre income by dealing drugs. And here at Spada we feel that mitigating circumstances prevent her from having to answer in the affirmative the question posed in the title of Kohnstamm’s book.

It’s called Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?

 

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
scissors

The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.