What’s your media job: Anna Richards on her career as a freelance travel journalist

Editor’s note: The Fix is running the “What’s your media job” series where we look at different job positions and career trajectories in and around the news industry. For this edition, we spoke with travel journalist Anna Richards.

Travelling the world and writing about your experiences sounds like the dream for many aspiring journalists. But there’s much more to writing a travel piece than jet setting to far-flung locations and stringing sentences together?

To look at the behind-the-scenes reality of travel writers’ jobs, The Fix spoke with freelance journalist Anna Richards, who’s written for some of the biggest English-language news outlets. 

Three years ago Richards quit her job at Audley Travel, a tour operator, to commit to travel writing full-time. Since then, she has published her writings in Lonely Planet, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent and more. She is now based in Lyon, France and exclusively focuses on France in her writings.

Like many, Richards was stuck home during the pandemic. The sheer boredom and the need to get extra cash, pushed her to send her first piece to SUITCASE, a quirky travel magazine. “I had sent [SUITCASE] a full-fledged written article, not knowing how to pitch. And amazingly they agreed to publish after a few changes. This gave me the confidence to approach other publications with my writing.”

Her first piece was about Argentinian sex hotels published in September 2020. After that, she started writing more articles. “It got to a point where my travel writing was picking up. Around the same time, I lost somebody very close to me. This was a huge life crisis, and I decided to quit my job at Audley, move to France and try to be a full-time travel writer.” She handed in her resignation in September 2021. 

Each week looks different from the last, Richard says. “You never know when editors are going to come back to you to accept a pitch or to commission stories or to give you some badly timed edits.” Her way of dealing with this is by working strictly during the traditional work hours. “I don't want to fall into the trap of working all the time.” This includes weekends off and long lunch breaks (since she is in France!).

Richards says her work consists of typical journalistic activities. Pitching, going for interviews and writing. Additionally, she takes on freelancer tasks like invoicing, managing accounts and doing taxes. “I would actually say pitching is not a huge part of my time, [but] going through the ridiculous number of PR emails is.”

A task that’s exclusive to travel journalists is planning their travel and, of course, travelling. Planning your travel is a tedious process that takes up a lot of time. “I've tried to slow it down and just do one trip in France a month. Otherwise, it's exhausting.”

Unlike many travel journalists, Richards has made it a point to travel more slowly and sustainably. Her job in a travel company made her confront the dangers of aeroplane travel. “It's incredibly frustrating because the onus is being put on the consumer to travel green rather than make any systemic change. With this awareness, I thought to drastically cut back my amount of travel.”

In the last three years as a full-time travel journalist, Richards has picked up many key lessons. 

She says that planning, pitching and travelling shouldn’t distract you from the main task of this job – writing. Her way to penning is old school. “My first draft is almost always pen and paper and it's usually horribly unstructured.” Once her thoughts are down, she takes her time restructuring the piece on her laptop. Always have an angle. “Publications will always want to know what your angle is. The exception is when you get commissioned to do an article.”

Richards recommends to start writing about places you are familiar with. “A lot of my first pieces were about Cornwall which is where I grew up.” Not only would it be easy to write about familiar places, but it would also add authenticity to the article. It also takes away the pressure of travelling to an exotic place to become a travel writer. Your writing sells the piece, not the location. 

Just like any other writing, finding a niche helps better your credibility with media houses. It helps you get recognised over other travel writers. In Richards’s case, she exclusively writes about France. This helps her get recognised for commission pieces by media houses and PR agencies.  

Another point she highlights is to pick a niche that aligns with the lifestyle you want. “You have to accept that you're going to spend huge amounts of your life on the road and for some people that's what they want.” Yet, not everyone wants to sign up for a nomadic life.  

Richards herself wants to strike a balance with her personal life, with her partner and dog and her professional life as a travel journalist. Hence, she chooses to slow down and do one trip a month within France. 

Travelling is expensive. Doing it sustainably more so. There are many airlines with cheap tickets that would take you across Europe for less than the cost of a T-shirt. However, doing the same journey with a lower carbon footprint is going to be expensive and time-consuming. One needs to plan their travel in a way that minimises their finances and time, while also reducing the damage to the environment. 

Richards started her travel writing journey part-time before she decided to go full-time. She advises others to do the same.

She also recommends having at least two months’ salary aside before switching careers.  

Travel journalists get inundated with PR offers, such as free hotel stays. Richards believes accepting them is not necessarily bad. Not only do they lessen your financial expense but they also save your time planning the trip. Richards says journalists have an ethical obligation to declare the PR deal in the article. “We have an obligation to be objective about a place we were invited to. If the experience is not good, it's not going to get a good write-up.”

Ethics is what separates travel journalists from social media travellers. The latter’s content is often clickbaity and brief, sometimes leaving out important details. “Around the world, many places are suffering from over-tourism. This is because these places have really blown up on Instagram or other social media sites.”

Her recommendations for travel journalists and journals:

Source of the cover photo: courtesy of Anna Richards