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The Ethics of Travel Writers
From: www.writerswrite.com

" The Miami Herald investigates the ethics of travel writing.

Just as they craft advertising campaigns to woo vacationers, tourism promoters spend considerable time and resources subsidizing travel writers' itineraries. Armed with free airline tickets, complimentary meals and VIP access, travel publicists around the country sponsor junkets for hundreds -- if not thousands -- of writers each year, industry executives said.

"Everybody wants to run a press trip. Every bed-and-breakfast, every hotel, every tour operator," said James Plouf, who runs travelwriters.com, where publicists pay $900 a year to advertise junkets. "We won't accept the press trip if there's not some kind of subsidy." The site counts 15,000 people as members, and posts about 200 trips a year, including a cycling trip through Ethiopia, a Hawaiian food tour and a visit to North Carolina's Swag Country Inn. The Greater Miami tourism bureau alone estimates it provides free or discounted trips to more than 300 writers a year.

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"I hate to be a cynic about this," said Kelly McBride, an ethics instructor at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg. But unless the article appears in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune or other major publication, "I assume the work is tainted when it comes to travel journalism. . . . I assume the judgment of the writer has been compromised by getting free meals or free plane rides."

Local tourism officials said that, as a rule, large U.S. newspapers do not accept free trips. But policies vary throughout the media industry. The Miami Herald bars staff reporters from accepting subsidies but will print freelance articles about free trips, travel editor Jane Wooldridge said.

"You don't think about the pressure while you're working on it," he said during a recent phone call. "You know, out here in L.A., the premieres are amazing because all of the super fans come out. That's the base of your support. Their passion just radiates."

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He was still graciously accepting acclaim for his work on X-2 when the opportunity to write Superman was presented. "I was going on vacation with Michael and Bryan to talk about doing 'X-3,'" Harris said. "We had just finished 'X-2,' and right before we left, the studio came to us with 'Superman Returns.' So instead, we spent the trip talking about 'Superman.'" Having decided against X-3, Harris and crew focused on Superman's rebirth. He was well aware of the scrapped Superman scripts that preceded him.

"We looked at 'Superman' like it was never going to happen in the first place," he said. "There really was no better plan. You had to send him away and bring him back. There couldn't be a re-make. Previous writers tried to re-make the films and they changed things." Harris is credited along with Dougherty for Superman's screenplay and story, which Singer has dubbed a "spiritual descendant of 'Superman: The Movie' and 'Superman II.'" Harris said they were looking for more of an update to Superman and his surroundings rather than a re-make, and that included the addition of modern-day situations that humanize him.

"It's more of a romance than the last few were," he said. "He's indestructible. He can never be killed and he can never be beaten. He's Superman. So what are you going to do? You can still put him in awkward situations with Lois Lane."

Although 93 percent voted for the change on Sunday, high absenteeism invalidated the results. In total, 3,600 of the town's 22,000 eligible voters -- fewer than half the minimum needed -- cast ballots, town Mayor Pedro Sanchez said. Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, was born in the banana-growing town near the Caribbean coast in 1927, and was raised there by his maternal grandparents until he was 9.

In his 2002 autobiography Living to Tell the Tale, he described how, as a struggling journalist in the 1950s, a return trip to Aracataca with his mother inspired him to become a novelist. One Hundred Years of Solitude, his first and best-known work, takes place in Macondo, a hamlet of zinc-roofed homes and a snowcapped-mountain backdrop that closely resembles Aracataca. The novel, in which residents suffer years of endless rain and an epidemic of insomnia, introduced the world to the style of "magical realism," in which fantastic events are made to appear ordinary.

To capitalize on the author's fame and attract tourists to the depressed town, the mayor last year proposed a referendum to change the town's name to Aracataca-Macondo. "We want to exploit Garcia Marquez's name in the best sense of the word," Sanchez said Sunday. "In honoring the maestro, the community will perceive tangible benefits."

A woman who worked as Hunter S. Thompson's assistant for some 20 years has filed a lawsuit against his estate and defunct corporation, claiming she is owed more than $100,000 in wages. The lawsuit, filed Friday in Pitkin County District Court, claims the journalist ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") did not pay Deborah Fuller for work she did between 1983 and 1996.

The lawsuit says Thompson had financial problems at the time and repeatedly promised Fuller, verbally and in writing, that he would pay her when he could. The lawsuit said she was never paid. Thompson, 67, shot himself on Feb. 20, 2005, in his home in Woody Creek outside Aspen, apparently despondent over health problems. Fuller, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., worked for Thompson from 1983 to June 29, 2004.

One of Fuller's attorneys, Bruce Fowler, said Wednesday he could not comment. Anita Thompson, the writer's widow and beneficiary of his estate, said she wasn't surprised by the lawsuit.

"I don't think she's going to get anywhere with it. These are not Hunter's intentions. These are things he would be very disappointed in," she said. "Hopefully this whole thing will be over soon," she said. In 2000, Thompson accidentally shot and slightly wounded Fuller when he fired at a bear on his property. No charges were filed.

Ms. Lee, now 80, has published virtually nothing of significance since then except a 1983 book review. But now she has written something for publication. It is a letter for O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, about how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town, The Associated Press reported.

In the magazine's July "special summer reading issue," Ms. Lee recalls becoming a reader before she entered first grade. Older sisters and a brother read to her; her mother read her a story a day; her father read her newspaper articles. "Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime," Ms. Lee writes of the popular old-time children's character, right.

She notes that books were scarce in the 1930's in the town, Monroeville, where she still lives part time; and the scarcity of books in a town without movies and parks made them a special treasure. "Now," she writes, "75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."

The site has since agreed to start filtering copyright and obscene content and institute tougher security measures after talks with the Motion Picture Association of America, a group that represents Hollywood studios.

In May, Warner Bros. agreed to start selling its movies and shows using peer-to-peer technology developed by BitTorrent Inc., which has been used to trade pirated copies of movies.

Both deals are aimed at appealing to younger consumers who watch shows on computers or portable devices.

"Kids in the dorm rooms don't own TVs," said Tom McInerney, co-founder and chief executive of Guba. "They've got computers and that's their source of entertainment."

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