Who makes it
Masthead
Four people, twice a year, and a list of contributors who are paid on acceptance rather than on publication.
The journal began in 2019 as a stapled thing of twenty pages, produced because two of us had spent a decade writing travel copy we did not believe and wanted to find out whether the other kind would sell. It sells about eleven hundred copies an issue, which is not a business and is enough.
We publish in May and November. Everything is reported in person and at the season described. Nobody on these pages has taken a press trip, a hosted stay, a free flight or an upgrade in the name of the journal, and we say no to about a dozen offers an issue.
Editorial
- Imogen SarrattEditor
- Bevan OchoaDeputy editor, overland
- Alma WieckDesign and production
- Devora NkemeluSub-editor and fact-checking
Contributors, issue fourteen
- Rania DelacroixAndalusia
- Peter GilfoyleMosel
- Hester Vaughan-PooleMaps and diagrams
How a feature gets commissioned
We commission against seasons rather than months, which means a pitch may sit for a year before it is right to send anybody. Writers are told this at the point of acceptance and are paid half the fee at that point rather than on publication, because waiting fourteen months for a payment is not something a freelancer should be asked to absorb.
Rates are the same for everybody at the same length, they are printed in the contributor notes rather than negotiated, and they are the same for a first-time contributor as for the editor. We are aware that this is unusual and we have not found a reason to change it.
Fact-checking
Every feature is checked against the writer's notes and, where a claim concerns a timetable, a price or an opening season, against the operator directly. Roughly one claim in six turns out to be wrong at the time of checking, which is a rate that has not improved in seven years and is mostly the fault of published information rather than of writers.
When we get something wrong in print we correct it in field notes as soon as we know, and again in the next issue. We do not quietly amend and we do not remove.
Photography and illustration
The journal is illustrated rather than photographed, partly because the drawings reproduce better on the paper we can afford and partly because a commissioned drawing of a place is an honest account of one person's attention, which a stock photograph is not. Every drawing is made for the piece it accompanies.
What we will not run
Round-ups. Lists. Anything with a number in the headline. Pieces about a place the writer visited in a different season from the one under discussion. Pieces arising from a trip somebody else paid for, however disclosed. And anywhere so fragile that our eleven hundred readers turning up would be the thing that ruins it — we have spiked two features on that ground and would do it again.