Travel Writer as Curator

11.03.09 | 9:51 AM ET

I’ve been in San Francisco for a couple of days—giving talks, enjoying a bit of the Bay Area, and meeting with travel publishers and travel editors. Today was filled with philosophy about the role of a travel writer and tour guide. I’m not sure exactly what we were talking about, but it stirred my thoughts nicely.

I spent breakfast talking with Spud Hilton, the travel editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. One of only about a dozen journalists in the U.S. still earning an income as a full-time travel editor, Spud gave me an update on the state of newspapers in our economy.

As we lamented the cost to society of traditional journalism morphing into blogs and amateur internet postings, Spud compared “citizen journalism” to “citizen dentistry” or getting a “citizen plumber”—do we really want to dispense with the professionals in trying to understand our world through news reporting?

Spud also talked about the challenges of getting good articles for his travel section. He likes a travel story that gives a place a personality profile, written by a writer who shares his experiences there in a way that tells more about the place than the writer.

I lamented how I can do a month of really productive guidebook work and come up with almost nothing of any value for newspaper articles. Then I can go out for two days without my guidebook chores and stir up plenty of great anecdotal material for newspaper and magazine writing.

Spud said one reason he likes to run my articles in the Chronicle is that people in the Bay Area already feel like they know me. This is helpful because he figures they get up and running with me more quickly, and that enables me to establish myself in a place with fewer words. And fewer words is a plus when you have limited newspaper space.

Conventional thinking is that people go to the travel section of a newspaper to learn about good deals. Spud believes you can find countless deals online these days, and for a paper to offer something unique it needs to run finely crafted articles that take you there. We were talking about my new Travel as a Political Act book, and found that we were both dealing with the same notion that there are two fundamentally different ways to travel—the old “tourist versus traveler” thing—and that one is not necessarily right or wrong. My passion has been to inspire people to both have fun and have that broadening experience.

Spud, who landed his position in part because he’s an expert in (and a fan of) the cruise industry, also sees two kinds of travel: what he terms “discovery travel” and “leisure travel.” We agreed that these are not mutually exclusive. You can go to Mazatlán and have the leisure on the beach (with a plastic wristband giving you unlimited margaritas and a stretch of Pacific beach cleared of locals) and then head a couple blocks inland to eat real Mexican food with locals.

Then I had lunch with my publisher, and the fun conversation continued. My publisher is a futurist/visionary/travel publishing wonk—a wonderful man to collaborate with if you want your guidebooks to succeed. In analyzing the ebb and flow of various guidebook series, he was into the notion that some guidebooks are into aggregation while others are into curation (as if designed by a “curator”).

Aggregation publishers build their guidebooks by pooling all the data in a giant content bank, and then ladle out various configurations as if buying modular furniture: Would you like an L-shaped sofa? How about a guidebook to clubs and shopping in capital cities? Other guidebooks are a result of “curation”—designing, organizing, and interpreting information that works together holistically, like a body works together. Knowing what a traveler needs and what they’ve learned or experienced so far, a “curation” guidebook intuits what is helpful as the trip unfolds.

I told my publisher that I experimented this summer with letting my staff dedicate days to hotel updates, freeing up time for me to “live the books” and have the experiences in order to better shape and design this end of the information. I was thinking this might be the most valuable use of my time. He said, “Yes ... curation.” (Perhaps the word is just made up, but I like it much better than aggregation.)

Then, this afternoon, I talked on the phone with my tour operations department and grappled with the challenge of guides who keep their groups very happy by aggregating the travel experiences on a tour, but aren’t curators in bringing everything together to give a big context and maximize meaning and learning by weaving together what the various local guides have shared and taught.

Whether it’s through newspaper articles, guidebooks or tour experiences, we are working to make the travel experience as rich and meaningful as possible.

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