The one thing that changed my career | Condé Nast internship | Awards
The one thing that changed my career | Condé Nast internship | Awards
Everything changed when Lottie won Young Travel Writer of the Year
Last week we launched our first ever travel writing retreat and within 24 hours it sold out! We’re now seeking out extra rooms so we can bring more of you along, so if you’d like to join us find out more here and fill out this form to get added to the waitlist.
Way back in 2020, when I had a whole raft of bylines under my belt thanks to a bumper year of travel in 2019, I entered the Travel Media Awards’ Young Travel Writer category. I’d thrown my hat in the ring for several different awards before this, and even been nominated for some, including the British Guild of Travel Writers’ members’ excellence awards. I had still never won a thing, though, and was getting used to that total crash of adrenaline with nowhere to go when they read out somebody else’s deserving name during the ceremony.
So when 2021 came along and the Travel Media Awards were held online thanks to You Know What, I sat all dolled up at my laptop in my home office on day #782 of lockdown #95 ready to be disappointed once again. When they did read out my name as the winner of the award, I actually didn’t even compute that it had happened. Home alone, with just my six-month-old puppy to celebrate with, it was somewhat bittersweet.
But the bitterness didn’t last for long. While I didn’t get to celebrate with friends and colleagues at an all-singing, all-dancing ceremony with free booze and tiny burgers, I did suddenly notice a lot more emails coming my way. These weren’t just extra unsolicited pitches from PRs, but they were emails from editors congratulating me. I had people asking to meet for coffee, send me on press trips and offering me work. It sounds mad, but winning that award supercharged my career in a way. An editor for Countryfile magazine asked me to pitch her, my commissions from The Telegraph kept coming in, the i paper asked me to write some stories for them and I did a few pieces for HELLO! online — all work I wouldn’t necessarily have pitched for.
Winning Young Travel Writer of the Year in 2020, when I was a youthful 29 years old, was one of the best things that’s happened to my career — my profile was immediately lifted, and work came in from other avenues I hadn’t expected, too. My excellent colleague Richard Franks, who specialises in writing on Scotland, said even just being nominated was a game-changer for him: “When I attended the ceremony, I met many PRs and DMOs who wouldn’t have heard of me until that point. I was suddenly then being offered press trips on the spot — all because I was up for an award. Since then, I’ve been able to build relationships that I wouldn’t have had without that nomination.”
Of course, we can’t all just go and win an award in order to supercharge our careers and profiles. There’s a small matter of being judged to be worthy. And if last month’s TravMedia Awards winners are anything to go by, it can feel like anyone who isn’t a white man is unlikely to get a look in. The shockingly white and male winners list for the eight individual journalist categories set Twitter (and various travel writer WhatsApp groups) alight the morning after the awards. A picture of the judging panel also raised several pairs of eyebrows, too. An overwhelmingly white judging panel selecting an all-white, all-male cast of journalists as winners in the individual writer/feature categories is pretty discouraging. While we’re not suggesting the judges were knowingly discriminating, there’s a whole lot of unconscious bias stored up in that many white people.
If you’re still not sure why this matters, read this thread by Meera Dattani on Twitter, who says “None of this is tokenism. It's about representation. Travel writing by its very nature is about the world, its people and places. The more varied the voices published, the more different takes on travel you read. The more varied the judges, the more varied a shortlist.”
We did ask TravMedia for comment, and while we had a chat on the phone with CEO Henry Hemming, the organisation declined to go on the record with a statement in response to our questions about how they selected the judges and what the overall judging criteria are.
The TravMedia Awards aren’t the first awards to be criticised and they won’t be the last, as time and again writers have commented that the same faces get on the shortlists year in, year out. When I was much greener in the industry, I remember being at an awards ceremony where the same man won three of the eight or so awards available that night.
While nobody thinks these writers aren’t worthy — of course they are, this is why they’re winning — you have to question how it is that they’re so consistently getting on the shortlists. Is it because the rest of us are just a bit mediocre, or is it because the opportunities afforded to them (to craft beautiful flowing prose on big double-page spreads) are greater? Could it be that the commissioning editors have a hand in this, too, as they use the same writers over and over, removing the chance for new, equally excellent writers to have their storytelling showcased to the world? Or is it because the lack of representation of people from ethnic minority backgrounds within mastheads or on judging panels discourages people from those backgrounds to apply?
I suspect that it’s a perfect storm of all of these issues — issues that aren’t new to the travel media. What can be done about it is the bigger, more complicated question to answer, though. Editors should open their doors to new and more diverse voices, organisations running prominent awards should actively encourage entries from ethnic minority writers, and the rest of us — including all those award-winning white men — should be lifting up and praising the work of the underrepresented voices in our industry.
Oh, and of course, we should all be entering the awards. Though I’d love to see some of those more established writers with entire cabinets of trophies and certificates step back and let somebody new take the accolades. Go on, white men, I dare you to not enter next year — I won’t if you don’t.
By some stroke of excellent timing, the Travel Media Awards are still open for entries. The categories are listed here and if you trawl through the information on the website, it’s refreshing to see the judging criteria published in detail, including that for the new Sustainability Writer of the Year award, which not only looks at good writing, but also the writer’s approach to travel overall.
We’re also planning our next round of mentoring for this summer, which will, again, focus on supporting new and aspiring travel writers from underrepresented backgrounds — so keep an eye out for further news!
Condé Nast Traveller paid internship
Thanks to Meera Dattani for bringing this to our attention: Condé Nast Traveller is running a four-week paid internship and they’re really hoping to get applications from aspiring writers from diverse backgrounds.
You’ve got to create some content in order to apply, but the successful applicant will get a London Living Wage for the duration of the internship, which can be done remotely or in their London office, and you’ll also get six months of mentoring afterwards.
Find out more and apply here.
Tweet of the week
Who to follow
Everyone on this Twitter list of writers of colour.
Industry must-reads
This piece by SJ Armstrong is a somewhat bleak outlook for travel writers but an excellent piece offering context on our industry’s dwindling budgets.
After last month’s sustainable travel series, here’s a bit on regenerative travel and WTF it means by Jen Rose-Smith.
And finally, let’s remind ourselves why travel writing needs diverse voices with this piece from last year.