Who Can Afford to Be a Times Travel Writer?

Restrictive policies might mean only the privileged get to write for the New York Times.

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Media freelancers aren’t exactly known for their financial stability. So who can afford to put down money on an international flight and a hotel with an IOU while an editor waits to publish a travel piece? Should you have to lose money while you work, and even be prohibited from taking other kinds of jobs in the meantime?

These are the questions provoked by a debate over the uniquely rigid editorial policy at the New York Times’s travel section, which requires freelance writers to abide by an ethical code stating they will not accept free or discounted services from anyone in the travel industry, including hotels and agencies: “You will not accept free transportation, gifts, junkets or commissions / assignments from current or potential news sources,” the contract states. Writers are required to abide by this policy “whether on assignment or not.” Then they’re asked in a questionnaire if they have taken any free trips (comps) while on assignment for any other publication within the last three years. If the answer is “yes,” they are generally disqualified from writing for the Times until their three years in travel-writing purgatory are up. (There’s no such ban on critics accepting free books or press screenings.)

Critics argue that the policy rewards those who don’t have to rely on travel writing for the majority of their income — writers who might be independently well-off or at least have a healthy slush fund — while pushing out anyone who can’t commit to the Times’s rules, especially younger writers. It’s a quandary: do you take the prestigious byline while giving up the possibility of free travel or sponsored content gigs; do you abandon writing for the Times entirely; or do you lie about your press junket habits?

“To me it was just never a consideration, writing for the New York Times,” says Alyssa Schwartz, a freelance travel writer for about seven years. Schwartz chose financial security. “It’s a career sustainability choice that I had to make and it is what it is.”

Schwartz is just one of the travel writers who Twitter-wrestled the newspaper’s newly-appointed travel editor, Amy Virshup, over the policy in November, dragging behind-the-scenes disputes into the open. Virshup had introduced herself with a post about the section’s “re-imagining,” pledging that it would assign more writers who already lived in the places readers wanted to visit — and invited feedback.

Many writers argued in response that the policy significantly narrows the scope of voices able to write for the section. At least eight journalists stated they had encountered Times writers on press trips, raising concerns that the policy is also unevenly enforced and that editors refuse to grapple with the reality that their writers may be lying out of self-preservation. “Tell me their names,” Virshup demanded of Schwartz. But no one was willing to rat out their colleagues, so Virshup shrugged off the claims.

“You’ve now been made aware of a problem — to just dismiss it is quite shocking to me,” Schwartz tells Study Hall of the exchange. “I think, as the newspaper of record, when you choose to ignore a glaring transparency issue that has been brought to your attention, whether you believe it or not, that has really negative ramifications for the credibility of your whole news outlet.”

It’s not that Virshup dismissed the claims as false outright, she responds; it’s just that there’s only so much an editor can do to ensure their reporters are behaving without becoming a cop. “I’m not naive enough to believe that people haven’t occasionally lied,” Virshup writes to Study Hall in an email. “If it came to my attention that one of the people who writes for us was taking free trips, I would talk to that person, ascertain the truth, and if he or she was taking free trips they would no longer write for us. People made this claim on Twitter, but there were never any names involved, so I’m not sure how to evaluate their claims. I don’t intend to hunt anyone down like Captain Queeg.”

The Travel Police

The issues of writerly integrity and ethics quickly begin to feel personal. From Schwartz’s perspective, Virshup’s impassioned defense of the Times policy — the not-uncommon belief that a writer could not write objectively about a subject that has bankrolled a trip — is a harsh judgment on journalists like herself, who says she takes free trips out of financial necessity while carefully preserving impartiality with the help of good editors and a policy of transparency.

The Globe and Mail, for instance, discloses to readers whether a travel piece was funded by a tourism board, then notes the board did not see or approve the piece before publication. The Guardian discloses comps to readers in a blurb after each article, as does the online art publication Hyperallergic, though junkets are extremely common in the art world. Afar Magazine’s guidelines specify only that writers may not undertake assignments pegged to a press trip, but do not forbid writers from participating then subsequently pitching. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post ban their writers from accepting discounts or freebies while on specific assignment. (Here’s a longer list of policies from the BBC; Ann Friedman also wrote a guide to good transparency practicesfor CJR.)

Catherine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times, writes over email to Study Hall that the paper’s policy ensures its writers are “above the conflict of interest and the appearance of conflict of interest.” But by her own admission, the policy is “limiting”; the newspaper never pays expenses for freelance travel writing because of an employment-law conflict, according to Hamm. She is clear-eyed about the implications it holds for cash-strapped freelancers.

“I don’t want to be the travel police,” Hamm writes. “I do want people to know that we understand that the monetary equation may not work for them. My fear is that travel writing will be like politics: Only rich people can do it.”

Where the New York Times differs significantly is in dictating what assignments its freelancers can take on another outlet’s time. “We do not police what other publications writers might write for,” writes Hamm, though she declined to directly address the New York Times policy except to say that each publication must do what it believes is best when it comes to upholding standards.

Virshup explained this aspect of the policy exists “partly to avoid guilt by association” that could come from hiring a writer who has taken free trips elsewhere. How does the reader know they can trust them? It’s also to avoid any confusion if a writer is getting multiple stories for multiple publications out of one trip. The blanket ban seems the cleanest, most straightforward way to maintain the standard. And exceptions are sometimes made. Virshup noted that she spoke to a writer, just starting out, whose pitch she liked but who had taken a freebie for a local travel publication; Virshup told him to come back in a year.

How Writers Make It Work

The rigid policy has sparked controversies in the past. In 2010, the New York Times’ public editor analyzed three freelance firings that occurred over slim or singular infractions. The paper also made a rather infamous example of Mike Albo, a freelance contributor who took a trip to Jamaica paid for by Thrillist (Albo turned the firing into a novella). At the time, Choire Sicha called it a “stupid little witch hunt” and wrote that he had taken to ignoring the Times Style section. Of course, Sicha is now the editor of the Times Style section and is presumably a steward of the problematic ethics policy himself. (When reached for comment, Sicha referred Study Hall to a Times spokesperson, who did not respond by publication time.)

“I’d love to know who these writers are who can take that loss, who can essentially be a bank for the publication,” says Schwartz. “I’d love to know how these people make it work.”

It’s not easy, one freelancer who wrote for the Times travel section for over a decade tells Study Hall. Just as Schwartz had determined early on to give up hope of the Times byline, the writer, who asked to remain anonymous, chose to forego other opportunities in order to write for the Times.

“There were so few places I could even write for,” the freelancer tells Study Hall. “I would approach them saying, ‘Here’s a story, I’d love to do it, but you have to pay 100 percent of my travel expenses. I can’t take any comps, because if I do I won’t be able to write for the Times anymore.’”

That’s a big ask because many major publications rely on outside funds to subsidize their travel writing. The freelancer recalled declining a lucrative assignment from a major national travel magazine because it was advertorial content, which they assumed was also forbidden at the Times. It was a lot of money to pass up, they say, but it wasn’t worth losing the Times as a client. Virshup clarifies that advertorial content is assessed on a case-by-case basis (it seems no one is clear on the policy’s exact boundaries).

“It would have made a huge difference for me to get a $3,000 paycheck instead of a $1,200 paycheck,” says the writer. “These are the kinds of things that I passed up.” Despite the negative ramifications, the writer still believes in the policy and its underlying principles. They don’t want to take free trips on a source’s dime, they explain. They agree with Virshup that it compromises a journalist’s impartiality.

But as the policy stands, they said, the policy is “exploitative” and “not sustainable” for writers like them, who abide by the rules and value the standards being enforced, yet still find it financially straining. The Times does cover expenses to a point — up to $1,200 for non-cover features, which is a drop in the bucket for international travel, though the budget can double for cover stories. (Virshup said expenses are worked out with the writer based on their budget and are paid as soon as they are filed.)

You can tack a reporting jaunt on to a vacation you’re already paying for yourself, as many journalists including Times contributors do (the freelance writer told Study Hell they “just couldn’t afford to vacation for fun without doing at least some work while traveling”). But is the Times relying on writers’ pocket money any less compromising than funding from brands?

The writer says they have tapered off writing for the Times in recent years because the lead times on stories became untenable. They had gone from waiting four months for reimbursement to waiting, at most, a year and a half before the stories published. A contributing-writer model would allow the Times to pay a consistent group of journalists and make it easier for them to survive without fundamentally changing the policy, the writer suggested.

Virshup, for her part, seems largely unconcerned with what critics of the policy have to say. To her and to the Times, it is a straightforward ethical matter. An inquiry about the supposed financial hardship on freelancers exacerbated by such a rigid policy was countered with concern for the Times’ readership. “No, we have not considered making [the policy] less rigid,” she writes. “The Travel desk’s policy is focused on readers, who deserve to know that what they are reading hasn’t been influenced by a writer’s acceptance of free accommodations, travel, food, etc.”

She calls the concern that such a policy limited the sorts of voices in the Times “a bugaboo” — “take a look at who actually writes for the section,” she writes. Her tenure as editor is still new; in November, she posted a thread on Twitter highlighting work in the section from a trans writer and from a black writer. Ultimately, she says, the whole debate over the policy — which is hardly her focus as leader of the section — is a “distraction from the great work we do at Times Travel.”

Travel Privilege

Few would argue Virshup’s model isn’t ideal, in a perfect world. But prestige travel publications will have to find a way to reconcile their high-minded ethics with their writers’ fundamental needs, the decay of the industry as a whole, and their unwillingness to establish healthier contracts. Perhaps hiring more locals to write about their homes could lessen the need to pay expenses, but Virshup says this new approach is utterly unrelated to any concern about free trips and is rather meant to cut down on “parachute reporting.”

Travel writing requires travel, argued another freelancer, who has never written for the Times but does write for other publications that forbid press trips, such as CNN. Publications need to commit to paying for all travel expenses in a timely fashion or the genre will become a hobby for the wealthy rather than a viable career path, if it’s not already. This writer has gone back and forth between travel writing and a full-time office job to make ends meet.

“It really begs the question of who can afford to be a travel writer, pure and simple,” they say. “That world then becomes very limited to a very small, privileged set of people who either have a trust fund or they have spouses who travel for work and they can tag along.”

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