✨ Welcome to our new series, TravMedia's Travel Writer of the Week! ✨

Each week, we'll be shining a spotlight on one of the incredibly talented, passionate, and inspiring Journalists or Editors from our amazing community.

This week, we'd like to shine the spotlight on freelance travel journalist James Stewart!

We hope you enjoy - happy reading !!

Where are you based?

Lewes in East Sussex.

What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?

Mostly newspapers – the Times/Sunday Times, Financial Times, occasionally the Telegraph – plus mags like National Geographic Traveller and Which? Travel. Given the outlets, I think of my audience as curious, intelligent travellers – I always aim for a broader point to a piece rather than travel for its own sake. Specialities? I'm more focused on interesting stories. If pushed, perhaps sailing/sea (surf, dive etc) or everyman extreme stories (though there's less appetite for these now). Plus I know several destinations very well, including Croatia, Slovenia, Tasmania and bits of Spain.

Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?

Freelance.

What are your professional pet peeves?

In no particular order:

• The demise of the sort of long-form storytelling you'd once set aside time for and rise of listicles, all driven by the metrics of digital publishing. Since listicles work best in digital and no one can measure engagement in print, where long-form works best, round-ups are a self-fulfilling prophecy IMO.
• The fact that PR based on relationships and stories is being squeezed by tight budgets. The increasing volumes of digital marketing fluff and AI slop in my Inbox swamps the good stuff, which may be why so many of the emails I receive are follow-ups. Which also swamp the good stuff.
• That article rates have not just stagnated over the last two decades but fallen, making travel journalism either a side-hustle or a hobby. There was hollow laughter among freelancers during the post-covid cost-of-living strikes. We've effectively been minimum wage for years.
• Payment on publication. Try getting a plumber to agree to being paid when you feel like it and see how far you get. 

In your past professional life you were …

A sound engineer doing gigs. The money was lousy but working with major acts was a privilege and the lifestyle could be fun. Hmm. I'm beginning to see a pattern to my work-life.

Where would you like to return to?

Most of my work is outlets asking me to go somewhere – ie I rarely choose – but it's probably time I went back to Indonesia; built of sea and islands, the destination could have been purpose-built for me, especially more remote islands in the east. I could pop back to Tassie while I was in the neighbourhood – I spent months there in the late-Noughties. I've a soft spot for Bolivia too.

What's on your bucket list?

For destinations, I still haven't made it to Namibia – a planned trip in 2020 fell through for obvious reasons – nor Brazil or Patagonia. Trips would be madness in terms of equivalent day-rate but what the hell. Is now the time to admit I've never been to New York? Shameful but we've all got those essential destinations we've never quite got round to. For experiences I'd like to sail an ocean passage – to Spain or Morocco or the Canaries will do – and would quite like to experience flying in a wingsuit. I won't, obviously – I'd die.

Where do you travel for fun?

Anywhere with sea, usually: I sail and used to surf a lot, though gosh, I'm rusty (must be all that saltwater). My waves in El Salvador this year weren't my finest.

Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …

A few years after I started writing for the Sunday Times, the desk sent me to Valloire to attempt a backflip off a ski jump. I didn't ski. Literally, flipping crazy. Anyway, I had six hours' tuition: two on nursery slopes with five-year-olds dressed as penguins; two getting used to speed on red runs; then the last two for the jump. A couple of jumps in, a white-out meant we couldn't attempt the backflip. When I explained this to the desk afterwards there was a long silence on the phone. “Just make me laugh in the piece,” said the editor. The backflip might've been easier.

What advice would you give your younger professional self?

Four things. First, travel sections are ultimately about holidays not reportage. That killer story on disenfranchised residents due to overtourism? It's for News Focus not Travel. Two: tighten up your pitches. If you can't express the story in a couple of sentences, you haven't honed it yet. Three: the secret to success? File copy to deadline (which means 9am that day, not that afternoon), to brief, to length, then turn around edits as soon as you get them. (BTW you've as much right to object to edits as a decorator would to a client's tile choice. Whoever is paying calls the shots.) Finally: don't overthink it. Journalism is craft not art.

What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?

Times are tough in travel press. Occasionally the threats feel existential. I like to think ours remains a happy little ship, with a positive relationship between press and PR. Let's keep it so.

How best should people contact you?

Good question. Probably email for the first approach, although I admit there's no guarantee I'll see it among the carnage in my Inbox. Possibly LinkedIn. WhatsApp is too invasive unless we're pals IMO.