Talking Travel is Internet Public Radio and a collective
of individuals — all professionals in the travel media and
the travel industry — who promote responsible and enlightened
travel experiences. We emphasize consumer advocacy, a multi-level
awareness of travel destinations — and the human relationships
that have always been at the heart of our industry.
Our webcast radio show and webmagazine provide a global
meeting place for:
We also emphasize certain values and principles inherent
in the “global village” and the new world of electronic
media. Our prime purpose is to integrate the three communities mentioned
above and to foster international understanding through the medium
of travel.
• We travel to explore the diversity of the
human experience, and in so doing we discover the commonality.
• Travel is the most experiential form of
learning.
• Travel is life-long learning.
• Everyone has the right to travel, just as
they have the right to learn.
• The most effective travel journalism is
content-rich, reveals layers of understanding and meaning in a
destination, and is about real people talking to and interacting
with other real people.
• Given the advent of the new electronic global
world of media, and despite the conventional economic structures
that have historically shaped and controlled the medium; travel
“writing” is no longer predominantly a print medium.
It has become — and always has been — an eclectic
medium and genre in which there are many voices and many editorial
hues and shades. It is not a formulaic form of writing.
• The principal “writer's guidelines”
that Talking Travel subscribes to are the same guidelines that
apply to all quality writing. We believe that travel writing can
be found in — or work in tandem with — many literary
forms such as fiction, literary non-fiction, biography, personal
journals, drama, history, science writing, and the equally expanding
world of visual arts. Because we are a Web-based electronic medium,
word length is less important to us than the levels of meaning
and the layers of understanding that a fully integrated multimedia
form of writing can achieve.
• The narrative in the human travel experience
is the essence of what we do.
• Talking Travel is an electronic, interconnected,
and global hub for the three principal communities mentioned above
each of which is a stake in the travel industry: travel suppliers,
travel journalists, and travel consumers.
• Travel is “fun” in the most
comprehensive sense of the word: it energizes, excites, enhances
an individual's sense of self within new environments, is a form
of human “play ”that serves to develop new skills,
tones our “mental muscles,” and helps re-balance our
lives.
• Travel expands and enhances our worldview,
and engages us on all levels: physical, emotional, sensory, conceptual
and, for many, spiritual.
• Travel is about heightening perceptions,
creating a broader human frame of reference, and encouraging global
social responsibility.
• Travel makes us aware of the richness of
human culture, and the meaningfulness inherent in it.
• Travel is as diverse as moments in time.
• Travel reveals the interconnectedness of
all things; a fundamental universal principle.
• We travel everyday of our lives. From the
moment we are born, we begin our journey from a state of dependence,
to independence, and finally to the highest state of development
— interdependence. As the 17th-century poet John Donne said,
“No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Briefly stated, we are all in this together.
• Travel journalists are storytellers in a
long line of such human communicators; from troubadours bringing
news in song from village to village to oral historians who pass
information and wisdom from generation to generation. Travel journalists
strive to find the narrative in travel: the setting, sets, characters,
characterization, dramatic conflict, and resolution. At the core
of the “theatre” of a destination they also look for
universal issues and elements.
• The travel industry — next to agriculture
— is the largest on the planet. From the earliest days in
human society someone has made it possible for “wayfarers”
to explore new realities — and to return home wiser for
it. Industry insider information and perspectives make us all
better travelers.
• Travel is forward-thinking but at the same
time emphasizes the adage “Wayfarer, keep looking back.”
