Season 8 Trailer

 Get the show’s transcript

[INTRO]

[00:00:00] YD: Welcome back to season eight of our podcast, everyone. I'm your host, Yulia Denisyuk an award-winning travel photographer, writer, storyteller, community builder, podcaster, and entrepreneur, working with publications like National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times and more traveling to interesting places around the world and producing stories that I'm excited about.

And today, I'm thrilled to welcome you to a new season of our Travel Media Lab podcast. Now, before we get started today, I want to take a moment to thank you. Yes, you listening right now, for your support and for continuing to listen to our show. In the two years that the Travel Media Lab podcast has been around, almost 10,000 people have tuned in.

How crazy is that? And our podcast has been downloaded over 20,000 times. Now, numbers aren't everything, especially in the podcasting business. But what these particular numbers tell me is that the insights, the tips, and the stories that we're sharing on the show are relevant and interesting to you. So thank you so much for your support.

Our mission with this podcast and with everything else we're doing inside Travel Media Lab is to help storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space. This is a podcast for photographers, writers, bloggers, creators, and storytellers who love travel and who wants to see their stories about travel and about our world, published in magazines.

We also have a special focus on discussing women's issues inside Travel Media Lab, like dealing with self-doubt, imposter syndrome, life work balance, asking for more money and more. Now, on this podcast, we host in-depth conversations with some of the most amazing women in travel out there. And we also share my expertise from years of working in the field with publications like National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, others, and going on assignments to places like Mongolia, Rwanda, Austria, Germany, Kazakhstan, California, and more. And we do all that with the hopes of inspiring you, our dear listeners, to take action on your own goals, reach out to your editors to pitch and to publish your stories and to see the goals and the dreams that you've had for yourself finally, come to life. And here's why. I absolutely know in my heart that all of that is within reach for you as well, because I'm not the only one who's been able to get published and get all these dream assignments. Our community members are doing that right now as we speak. What I teach inside our membership and in our Intro to travel journalism program.

And of course, what I share on this podcast has already helped our students get published in places like Conde Nast Traveler, Time Magazine, B, BBC Travel and More, and work on assignments with tourism boards. So I know this stuff works because it has worked not only for me, but for our students and for our members as well.

And that means that you can get there too. And that's the most powerful and important realization, I would say.

[00:03:24] YD: Now, what does season eight look like? In this season, we're going to be bringing you conversations I'm really excited about from different corners of the travel media industry, which is roughly, sort of, divided into three sections. There are travel media publications like National Geographic, like Conde Nast Traveler, like Travel and Leisure. There are freelancers and journalists like me and like members of our community, and there are tourism boards and what are called DMOs or destination marketing organizations, who are promoting travel to their particular destinations. And the freelancers, people like me, we are kind of in the middle because we work with the magazines. We also work with tourism boards. In this season, I'm going to be interviewing people like Paula Carrero, who is a veteran public relations executive who will bring a perspective of representing a tourism board.

She's represented, destinations like Abu Dhabi, like Panama and others, and in our conversations I'm going to be asking her what are tourism boards looking for when they partner with media? What are some of their challenges and struggles and how can we make it a better partnership for all of us? So super excited to be talking to Paula who will be providing light on these and other questions in our upcoming conversation.

We will also talk to people like book author and trouble writer Christine Chitnis, who will share the journey of publishing her book Patterns of India with us. Christine's story is a beautiful testament to how an idea you carry around in your mind can one day become reality and I can't wait to welcome her to our show.

In this season, I will also be taking you behind the scenes of the travel media industry with episodes that will explore the shift, a very important shift I'm seeing in the field, and I will tell you more about what that shift is. You have to just stay tuned, and I will also share my list of publications that are currently working with media, working with journalists, and most importantly, paying them well. Okay, that's a really, really important list of publications to have, and I'll be sharing that in an upcoming season.

So as we get going on this new season, season eight of our Travel Media Lab podcast, we are working hard to build a collaborative and supportive space inside travel media to help you get published a space where you feel inspired, nourished and encouraged to start telling stories you've always wanted to tell and to find your name in the pages for the websites of all the publications you've always wanted to be in.

We'll guide you along the way with our insights, with interviews, with our amazing guests, and some very special treats for our listeners.

You know, I always tell the story about how I started Travel Media Lab because I think it's important to recognize how much progress has been made in, uh, in the last few years because when I started this, uh, platform two years ago, I. I did it because I had years, literally years of trial in the error where I was building my travel journalism career, mostly by myself without any support.

The weren't that many places and spaces like this one, like Travel Media Lab existing six years ago when I started. And today, my mission is really revolving around the fact that publishing your stories, reaching out to editors, pitching your ideas, doesn't have to be lonely or scary or overwhelming at all.

If these are your passions, travel and storytelling and selling stories about our beautiful world, if you have big dreams of working with some of these top publications out there, our platform is here for you. We provide clarity, knowledge, and next steps for you to carve out your own path in the space, because I believe that every single one of us has a place in this space. Every single one of us.

[00:07:40] YD: Now, how do we do that? Right? In addition to this podcast that you're listening right now and that we'll continue sharing conversations and insights on with you. We have a program six month program called In Intro to Travel Journalism that gives you the base knowledge you need to advance in travel media.

And this year, a very important announcement that this year we will only be enrolling into this program once a year. Now we used to do it twice a year in May and in November and this year we're only enrolling once, this coming May. So if you've been thinking about joining our program, definitely stay tuned. Much more information will be coming your way about this. But just, take note that the only opportunity to join us this year will be in this coming May. And more on that, on, on future episodes of the show.

[00:08:29] YD: We also have a membership called, The Circle, to provide community and ongoing support for you as you get established in the industry, and the enrollment to The Circle is ongoing. So anytime right now or tomorrow or a week from now, you can go to travelmedialab.com/circle and check it out and join us. We have a ton of programming and a ton of support as part of that membership as. And of course, you can find information about our program and about our membership, including some things that our students and members have said about being, inside our programs on our website, travelmedialab.com.

We've planned a lot of exciting episodes for you this season, and I can't wait to share all of that with you. And before we wrap up today, I have one thing that I actually want to ask you to do. If you made it through the end of this season announcement, then I know that you are a true fan of Travel Media Lab, and if that's the case, if you've ever sent me a DM on Instagram telling me how touched you were by something you heard on the show, if you ever sent me an email or if you ever told me in person, Yulia, I just love your podcast so much, then please, take a moment right now, right this second to go on your phone to go to Apple Podcasts or to Spotify, wherever you're listening to us right now, and leave us a rating or review.

That's it. Very simple. If you've been listening to us week in and week out, and you haven't yet left us a rating or review, please, I invite you to do so today. Right now, as you're listening to this announcement, it'll help us so much and it'll ensure that more listeners can find our show, which means that we can continue bringing more episodes to you.

So by leaving that rating or review, you're helping the show. Yes. But you're also helping a future you who will continue listening to our episodes a year from now, two years from now. So please take a moment right now to do that, and I will be so, so grateful to you if you do. Thank you so much for listening to the Travel Media Lab podcast and to our show today and for giving yourself this space for your creative goals to take shape.

And I will see you next week with our very first episode of the season. Take care onwards, and thank you so much.

[END]