S5 E55: Responsible Travel Writing with Rooted Founder JoAnna Haugen

Get the show’s transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder, and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement, and structure. I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space.

If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence, and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go!

[EPISODE]

[00:00:39] YD: On the podcast today, I want to share with you a part of a very special conversation we recently had in our membership, The Circle. Inside our membership, we run weekly check-ins, monthly brainstorm meetings and workshops, and more, all with the goal of helping our members publish their travel stories. Occasionally, we also invite wonderful people from inside the travel media industry to share their knowledge with our members.

So, this is what I'd like to share with you today. We recently invited travel writer and consultant JoAnna Haugen to come speak to our members on the topic of responsible travel writing. JoAnna is an award-winning writer, speaker, consultant, and solutions advocate, and she's also the founder of Rooted, a solution platform and the intersection of sustainable tourism, social impact, and storytelling. JoAnna is currently based in Carthage, Tunisia, and it was so exciting to see her connect with us from there. 

I really love the space and the community we have created inside The Circle, and the way we're pushing our craft forward in our membership. I really hope that in today's episode, you'll get a sense of what we do inside The Circle, too. And if you're interested in joining us, I want you to know that we have three different levels at which you can join and start working towards getting your own travel stories published. By the way, all of our workshops get recorded. So, when you join, you get access to the full conversation with JoAnna. Get more information about The Circle and ways to join us at travelmedialab.com/circle.

Alright, let's get into this episode. We're joining JoAnna just as she's taking us through the third pillar of her responsible travel writing framework.

[00:02:37] JH: As responsible travel writer, you need to remember that you're also a global citizen. You are a vital conduit of information between the destinations you cover and the people who want to learn about and travel to those destinations. So, every decision you make in your work through pillar one, and pillar two has a ripple effect. It has a greater impact.

Now, you might only think of yourself as a travel writer, but you really are a lot more than that. You're a traveler, you're an influencer, you are a trusted friend, and you are a global citizen in the world that we live on. Your identity does not live in a vacuum and neither does your work. So, this is where travel writing really separates itself from other soft forms of lifestyle writing, because what you write has very, very real impacts on communities and people beyond the pages of a magazine. And that means you need to be thinking about how your decision making as a travel writer both positively and negatively impacts the greater world around us.

So, what does this bigger picture perspective look like? First, it means thinking about how your decisions are reflected in the context of the climate emergency. For example, is it appropriate for you to be flying around the world several times a year? Can you combine press trips or recording trips with conferences and personal travel? Do you follow your own responsible travel advice like cutting out single use plastics when you travel? 

You have a responsibility to minimize your environmental impact by not putting undue environmental strain on the destinations that you visit. Minimize your food waterways, eat locally sourced foods, participate in nondestructive activities, and support and promote individuals, businesses and initiatives that are actively fighting the climate crisis in the places that you work. 

It also requires being cognizant of how your travel writing helps or hinders sustainable development in the destinations about what you write. It really should be your intention to minimize negative harmful impacts, while also maximizing positive environmental, financial, social and cultural impacts. In the tourism context, sustainability means that travelers shouldn't be contributing to gentrification, or systemic models that perpetuate poverty, oppression or racism in any way. It means you should be mindfully using resources like water and electricity. It means you need to be ensuring local people's health and wellbeing are prioritized. Doing minimal damage to all aspects of the environment. Being an ally and doing what you can to minimize any inequality. Supporting initiatives that promote economic growth for local people. Being responsible consumers and minimizing your waste consumption.

Now, as a travel writer in the travel space, the words you use and the choices you make, impact the decisions that travelers are going to make as well. So, to realize sustainable tourism, travel writers must promote and encourage sustainable practices. For example, are you aware of your financial impact on the local community if you stayed in international hotel brands? And do you make it a point to support and promote local initiatives and businesses over international ones, as a writer, as a traveler and as a citizen of the world?

Let's talk about press trips. For many, many travel writers, press trips are necessary to sustain a career. Travel writing, I don't think I need to tell you, is not a lucrative sector of the publishing industry, and it could be very costly to cover all the expenses affiliated with traveling. Press trips are also controversial. There is often an unspoken expectation that writers “owe” their host’s coverage. And this leads to the belief that travel writers can't be objective in their coverage. It has subsequently led several publications to forbid writers from taking or writing about experiences from press trips. Unfortunately, this in turn has led to the dark underbelly of an industry where writers practice the “don't ask, don't tell” policy, whereby they simply don't let their editors know that their travel has been compensated by an outside source.

Being a responsible travel writer means acting ethically throughout the press trip process. So, before the trip, you have a responsibility to be clear with your hosts about your expectations, to research the destination for context. And going back to that question, Yulia asked, how do we look beyond the tourism board? This means thinking about that before you go on the press trip and doing that research, and questioning activities on the itinerary that raise red flags, like the swimming of dolphins that I always kind of sat, that sat in the back of my mind.

On press trips, I want you to look for the story beyond the story that your hosts push you toward, and never forget that you are a guest in somebody else's home. And then after the trip, be transparent about how your trip was funded while you're pitching. I want you to actively participate in the editing process to avoid any misrepresentation as well. And we talked about that a little bit. Being upfront with your editors while you're pitching and saying you want to be part of that editing process.

Finally, it's important to remember that as a public facing writer, you are also an influencer of sorts. Even if you don't want to be an influencer, you don't have a choice. Your name is out there, your work is out there, and that means that what you're putting out in the world is influential. Your readers are aware of your actions, which means you need to think about how your responsible travel writing practices are interpreted on social media, and other public facing spaces. Do you model environmental stewardship, cultural awareness, and social sensitivity through your social media accounts? Do you think carefully about your word, imagery, content choices on every platform that you're using?

As a travel writer, you influence your audience. I cannot emphasize that enough. Your work affects how other people travel and the choices that they make on their trips. You impact how they interact with and support local people and institutions. You can influence their environmental footprint and its residual impact on local communities, and you can responsibly model how they should share their stories with friends and family who may also be future travelers down the road.

So, as a traveler and as a global citizen, your decisions influence how and in what way tourism related businesses are supported and are able to thrive. You can affect the kinds of tour offerings that other companies are likely to develop and promote. Your work can influence policies enacted to manage and mitigate environmental concerns, and your writing can further the demand created by travelers.

The choices you make in the very, very many roles of your life matter. Do not underestimate that impact, positive or negative, that you can have on this world and as a travel writer. As a travel writer, this awareness really should guide your decision making, from your very first moments of research to the final time that you share a piece of content with your readers, with your followers, and with potential travelers.

[00:10:35] YD: I just want to say that your last part of the presentation was really a great reminder for me, personally, that we are influencers. That we influence people's decisions, and that our work is important. It can be hard, especially with everything that's happening right now in Ukraine to feel that your work doesn't matter, in some way. So, for me personally, it was a great, great reminder. I appreciate that reminder, that no, our work matters, our work is important. It influences people's decision. So, we have to treat it accordingly. So, I appreciate that.

[00:11:17] JH: Absolutely. Just to touch on that too, because it is something, I get asked a lot about. For example, choosing tour companies, and how do we know if the companies or the accommodations that we're choosing are greenwashing. This comes up quite a bit. I want to not only are you an influencer, you are an advocate, and you are a consumer too. And so, you have the right to ask hard questions of your hosts, of your accommodations, of your tour operators. That is your right. It is important to provide yourself with that context and that information and understanding to inform the work that you're doing.

So, don't be afraid to use your voice and to use your influence, not only as a travel writer, but as a concerned global citizen and conscious consumer, to hold the rest of the travel industry accountable for the work that they're doing. I want them to hold you accountable and I want you to hold them accountable, too.

[00:12:22] YD: Definitely. But I think what you said is really important. It's using those questions that you shared with us as a way to put everything we do, actually, in our work through those questions and through that thinking, whether it's research ahead of time, whether it's writing and choosing a format, whether it's selecting photography that goes along with the piece. Every interaction, basically, we take through those lenses, and that's how we become better at more responsible writing.

[00:12:51] JH: Yeah. It looks like we have a question here in the chat from Barbie, who says, “How do you balance writing something that won't necessarily paint a place in the best light because of their politics or culture? All travel isn't poppies and rainbows and sometimes they're tough stories to tell”. Hundred percent, Barbie. There's this myth of the perfect destination, and it does not exist. Every place— I like to say they’re perfectly imperfect. Places are beautiful and complex and nuanced, and we need to be able to embrace and be willing to embrace that as travel writers.

So, how do we balance writing something that won't necessarily paint a place in the best light? We embrace that and we do it anyway. Because it's honest, because it's transparent, because it's reality. We need to do a better job as travel writers to be more authentic in that kind of way. And travel publications, travel media has come under fire in recent years for doing harm. On the daily, I feel like I'm kind of calling out concerning articles to travel media. But I can also tell you that there are publications out there that want to do better than me. I mean, they’ve brought me into their editorial rooms and said, “Talk to us. We know we're not doing the best we can, how can we do better?”

So, there is a tension out there. But again, you as a travel writer need to advocate for that. You might have an editor who pushes back and says, “Well, we don't want to depress people. We don't want people to feel like that they aren't welcome here, that they shouldn't go here or whatever.” We need to be real. We need to be real. And sometimes, travel is ugly. Travel is messy. But you know what, the world is a messy place! Look around us and we need to be really honest about what's happening in the places where we're going. Those are also the places that travelers are going.

I talk a lot with my clients about how we talk about the client with travelers, because for a long, long time, we pretended that the climate crisis was something that we worried about at home, but that wasn't a problem when we travel. And now, tour operators, for example, are doing a much better job of finding ways to talk about the climate in their work. So, in our travel writing, we need to be willing to talk about, “Hey, you know what, waste is a challenge here.” I don't necessarily like to call it a problem. But it's a challenge here. Here are some of the solutions that are being put forth to address that challenge.

The great thing about being very real in a writing like this is that life is messy at home, life is going to be messy when we travel. And actually, it gives readers a chance to connect their home life with their travel life, and that's where we can actually see really powerful behavior change on behalf of travelers. So, yeah, how do you balance writing something that's not perfect? Hey, welcome to the world. This is the world we live in.

[00:16:03] YD: I think it's such an important conversation, because like you said, travel writing has been so guilty for so many years of just, what's the word? Beautifying everything and idealizing. Having stories that idealize a place or escapism, right? It's just so, such problematic behaviors. But it's amazing to hear that a lot of editorial rooms are not aware and looking for that more real and more honest writing and conversations, and that's exciting.

[00:16:38] JH: Yeah. It is exciting. It's a slow, slow evolution. I mean, travel media in particular, is they're having a record price and really complicated things. A lot of their advertising budget, for example, comes from cruise lines. How are you going to rectify that? They are dealing with some really complicated things on their end, so those are models that they built into their businesses that they're having to struggle with right now. I started looking around and saying, “I don't know if we can write things that are really honest about cruise lines, when cruise lines are advertising with us.” So, we're starting to see some interesting new funding models. We'll see where it goes.

I do know that there are some publications that have reached out and said, “Okay, we need to do better, give us some new ideas for how we do that.” So, to me, that's promising. Evolution, again, I want to encourage you to be an advocate for responsible travel writing. I think people want it. I know people want it. People are conscious consumers now. They want to be more responsible travelers and the only way they can do that is that they have accurate information. 

Like I mentioned earlier, you can ask the hard questions. Don't be afraid to ask about a supply chain. Don't be afraid to ask about where your money is going. Don't be afraid to ask how your company is offsetting your carbon emissions, or what they're doing to ensure that they're not doing anything harmful to wildlife. There is a lot of greenwashing out there and we need to both ask hard questions, share what we have found those companies that are legitimately doing good work, and actively avoid those companies that are not doing good work.

Like I said, you help create demand. So, when you're writing an article, call out and amplify those companies that are doing good work, then we're going to influence people to use those services. What we don't want to do is because we feel like we have to, because we've went there on a press trip, write about something that actually is harmful. So, asking questions, is honestly, it is your best defense. Companies that are not greenwashing we'll gladly and happily and excitedly tell you about what they're doing. Because they're investing a lot of money and they're investing a lot of time to make sure they're doing it right.

[00:19:21] YD: There's a good article, which cruise lines are really doing an effort?

[00:19:27] JH: Yeah. And there are decent cruise lines out there. So again, I wouldn't write it all up because we do need to make that balance, right? For example, we talked about flying. Should we fly? Well, maybe we shouldn’t be making the short haul flights. But there are small island nations that rely on these flights. So, when we think about being an environmental ambassador, how can we make sure that we're maximizing the positive impact of anything that we’re doing while minimizing the negative impact? It's all about, there's no perfect answer. There's no perfect solution to this. But we should be always thinking about these things in the course of our work.

[00:20:13] YD: Sure. It's messy and complicated.

[00:20:16] JH: Life is messy and complicated. Take your readers on that journey with you.

[00:20:21] S: Yeah, definitely. Just saying thanks.

[00:20:30] YD: Definitely. Shannon, who had to drop out says that she found it so interesting and enjoy thinking about how she travels and how she represents places in images and writing. Yeah, I think for all of us, this has been a really great, great workshop and a great reminder for us to be thinking about these questions all the time, not just when we sit down to write something, but way before doing it and after as well.

[00:20:58] JH: Well, if anybody has any questions, I would like to invite you to hop over to rootedstorytelling.com. Feel free to drop me a note on the contact form there. Like I said, I'm on Instagram, happy to answer questions. I want you to succeed. I want you to be ambassadors and responsible travel writers. So, I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have that come up while you're going through this process.

[00:21:24] YD: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, JoAnna. It was wonderful to have you. And just last question before end today, what is the most exciting thing for you about living in Carthage, Tunisia at this point?

[00:21:39] JH: Well, that's a really great question. So, what I love here is the history. It is so embedded in where I live. This is such an old part of the world. I'm just barely scraping the surface here. But right down the road are these ancient maps. I have a column in my backyard, that's just, it's there. But it's like this everywhere. We just have like mosaic sitting around, and it's everywhere, where it's just part of life. It blows my mind to think about how old and how long people have been here. It also gives me a lot of hope, especially when we look at the world today. Sometimes I struggle, I’m like, “Gosh, I don't know if I can make it through another day.” And then I remember that people are resilient. They've been through conflict before. They've been through very difficult times, so I see that in the place that I live and that’s a very exciting thing.

[00:22:37] YD: It’s a wonderful thing to close on, I think, for all of us right now. Yeah, appreciate that, JoAnna, thank you so much.

[00:22:44] JH: Thank you for having me today. It was so wonderful to spend time with you all.

[END OF DISCUSSION]

[00:22:50] YD: Thank you so much for listening today. Dear listeners, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with JoAnna Haugen. And if so, please consider leaving us a review so that more listeners could find our show. I can’t stress how important it is for us to get reviews of our podcast. I really talk about it on every episode, but it really helps us to get in front of more people who might enjoy our show. So, if you've been inspired by something you heard today in our conversation with JoAnna, or in any other episodes of our show, please consider leaving us your review. This is one of the best ways you can support our podcast. And don't forget, you can hear the rest of what JoAnna had to share with us on the topic of responsible travel writing when you join us inside The Circle. Visit troublemedialab.com/circle, to learn more about how our membership can help you with your goals. Thanks again and I'll see you next week.

[END]