Those of us who blog are going to be held to very strict ethical standards by the new FTC guidelines that take effect in December. Members of the traditional media should certainly be held accountable in the same way.

Of course, I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with accepting free trips and swag. But Newsweek and NYT folks should be held to the same standards of disclosure as bloggers, and similarly, their mentions of any products and services they received along the way should be considered within the confines of that swag relationship.

Let them enjoy the trip they went on, but they need to disclose their free airfare, accommodations, etc. whenever writing about those brands and services in the future. It's only fair.

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The NYT Company has always been quite sanctimonious about free trips/meals etc. The policy as stated to freelancers I worked with at other publications: If you've ever taken a free trip, you cannot write for the Times (although I know of dozens of folks who did take freebies and still wrote for the Times and its affiliates). And, when I worked for the NYT Co., I was made aware in no uncertain terms that freebies were verboten and grounds for dismissal, and freelancers who take freebies, even if not for the Times, were not to be used.

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When travel writers were allowed to take free trips our travel sections across the nation were much better, more informative than they are today. I am friends with several former travel writers who did just a great job bringing us travel news from around the world.

Now we mostly get canned stories and photos from the destinations.

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As a contributor to National Geographic Traveler from 1983 to 2003, and a former Reuters News stringer and CBS Radio staffer, I learned this: like a free lunch given to a beat cop, accepting free anything compromises your integrity, period. You are no longer your own man or woman; you are implicitly obliged to return a favor. National Geographic Society and CBS policy was and I hope still is unequivocal: no freebies. There are legions of travel writers out there subsidizing cheapskate publishers (including most guidebook companies) by scrounging and begging for freebies. It's unseemly. I don't buy the notion that freebies make for better travel writing. If you have to beg to get there, find another solution.

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Hello! I am a writer at a local alt-weekly and am at the beginning of my career. I am interested in travel writing but also slightly confused--if you are not supposed to accept free travel, how then do freelance and staff writers afford to take trips to Italy and China, raft down a river and explore a tropical island? I don't understand how freelance writers can afford to take trip after exotic and elaborate trip. Maybe one or two a year, but not a succession--unless travel writers are highly compensated. I don't know how much they make. Can one of you seasoned travel writers (how I envy you!) explain to me how this computes?

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I guess I understand why Newsweek, the NYT and other media with reputations for incorruptibility to protect need to steer well clear of this sort of thing. But as someone who used to toil in the vineyards of travel journalism, I can tell you that quid pro quo is almost always a non-issue. Reputable travel magazines have their credibility to protect, and are not about to sacrifice it for a couple of free air tickets or a hotel room. Reputable travel p.r. people steer well clear of writers who have a reputation for seeking graft. I agree with Mr. Miller that skinflint publishers - who don't see why they should pay for something that someone is willing to give them for free - are culpable to a degree. But it's not that simple. A lot of newspapers, magazines and alt weeklies simply couldn't afford to run travel stories if they had to pay expenses. What it boils down to is, what are you willing, and not willing, to do in exchange for that freebie? In all the years I accepted subsidized travel (and even went on the occasional junket), I never wrote a lie and never promised anything. I believe this is the rule and not the exception.

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Okay, I feel I just need to clear this "ethical" issue up once and for all, having been in travel journalism for 10 years and just published my own book series (for which I did NOT really take freebies b/c I had no time, but instead got paid peanuts on the advance, worked 90 hours a week, was not paid over Thanksgiving all the way thru Christmas, and then was warehoused when my VP Sales, VP Marketing got laid off and the publisher defaulted on bank loans thankuverymuch!!)

I have been on junkets with freelance writers AND/OR staffers AND even a bureau chief from: Conde Nast, the NYT, the LA Times, Time Magazine, Bloomberg, Newsweek, Hearst and the Boston Globe. Oh, and all the National Geographic publications, Travel & Leisure, Men's Journal and I am probably missing a few but you've got the drift.

Also, I have 2000 travel publicists in my files, including probably a few that most would consider "reputable," and they send me invites, um, every day? Ranging from: "Let us send you a free bottle of wine!" to "Come to an exotic African country, fly first-class, and hang out with the King."

Bribery and other immoral business practices are rampant in travel media and travel marketing, as well as in wine, spirits, sports, music, food, luxury, beauty, fashion AND most of all the *government*. The State of California cut something like $10 million out of the Veteran's Affairs budget last year--it caused a furor--and guess where it came from? Business travel! Yes, these wonderful folks are spending millions of dollars from the veteran's till to go on Vegas junkets so luxurious they'd turn you green...and they are on FULL SALARY while they do it. When that funding was cut, TIA (Tourism Industry of America) wrote in a formal complaint.

I just don't want to hear or see any more of this "scandal" around someone taking a press trip. It's a perk for heaven's sake. People who take them constantly or beg for them are gross and unprofessional. People who never ever ever take them are either making their money elsewhere, independently wealthy, or they are LYING. Some people take them every now and then--as I do--because it is the only way to get somewhere, or because we like the itinerary, or because it sounds (God forbid) fun!!

I spent 3 months driving around the mountains last winter, researching my books. I slept on floors sometimes, I got an AK-47 pulled on me, and I also got a tick-borne fever and almost died the week before Thanksgiving. Then I went on a press trip to the Broadmoor, with a liquor company, because a) I write about the liquor, b) I wanted to be in a warm, happy, festive place again and c) I was *lonely* after three months with no one but my dog.

I selected my two favorite recipes out of 60 from the mixology contest that was the main event of the press trip... and I published them, in a lifestyles news blog I write for a major publisher.

If anyone thinks that my work ethics are not what they should be, or that I am in some way "not my own woman" as a writer, they can bite me. That absolutely includes the New York Times...I was on one of my very first junkets with one of their spirits writers, and I am DAMN sick of having them touted as the be-all and end-all of ethical papers.

On that note:

I had a friend who's a PR tell me last year he was busy that day "writing a story for a client, to be published in the LA Times." When I asked him how that was possible, he said, "When you spend as much as my client does on advertising, you can do whatever you want."

AND another friend just stopped writing for the hallowed SF Chronicle because they docked her pay from $1 a word to 10 cents a word.

Seriously...I don't see where any of these outfits get off waxing high-and-mighty about ethics.

End. of. rant.

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We can't afford to travel on our own, and we're accused of having no integrity if we take subsidized trips. Really, travel writers can't win. Except that we have the best job in the world and I can handle getting no respect for that. Yes, there is pressure to write great things when you're on a press junket. Do you bow to that pressure? It's not necessary, if you ask me - I've written a list of reasons why it's not an issue on my own blog. http://www.wanderingcarol.wordpress.com.

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I was wondering portionalistically

“Numbers are God’s thoughts... The divine wisdom is reflected in numbers which are impressed on everything ... The structure of the earthly and the moral world rests on eternal numbers.” So, St. Augustine concurred, in the 4th century.
Numbers mean money, wealth and realestate in modern thought.
Deciphering the imagery of Icelandic myth, as in the (my) book, The Measure of the Cosmos, tells the story of a different use of numbers, – not that of financial ruin, but the matrix of portions. In the allegory of one of the most famous books of world literature, the Icelandic skinbook, Njálssaga, is preserved a pagan ritual of hallowing virgin land. It appeares that in a sermon of hallowing land, prehistoric man paced on virgin land an eon’s old Image of Creation. In fact, Man’s Image of Creation was a projection on the terrain of the Sun’s annual path around the Zodiac, anchored to prominent landmarks on the ground. The Image of Creation was at once sacred and a practical Sun Watch. The units of measurement as well as the classic forms in the history of world art were modeled on the proportions of Man’s body. Man was the alpha and omega of all, the universal reference measure, the great cosmos in miniature form. Subsequently, the proportions fused with esthetics and thoughts which stir in Man’s psyche and gradually assumed divine attributes.
The ancient approach is akin to a yardstick, which applies not only to the ancient Image of Creation in the allegory of Njalsaga, for recent research has established that the like reference frame was used in antiquity in all parts of the globe, bringing to light a Blueprint up on which cultural areas were later built. Suggesting that such an Image of Creation initiated the famous Stoneage constructions in Europe and underlies most cultivated areas of the world. Thus; Jelling, Denmark -St.Denis, France -the Vatican, Rome -Glastonbury, Avebury and Stonehenge in Somerset -and Marble Arch and The Tower in London are rooted on such Blueprint, suggesting their location is according to a measured universal plan that predates them. Numbers do not just mean the amount of coins in your pocket, they do for forms what notes do for music.
Petur

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Bercovici,
Great. You got a scalp.
You better not live in a glass house yourself.
-Not a fan. And without a dog in this fight.

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This is an awsome article. Very basic but extermely effective movements to build a great body.
buy forclosed homes--buy forclosed homes

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