Travel journalists adopt some practices characteristic to bloggers, states a new study. Bryan Pirolli of Sorbonne University studied the professional identity of travel journalists. The article compares travel journalists’ opinions and pieces of work to those of bloggers’ in Paris.

How do travel journalists distinguish themselves from bloggers and other content creators? The study finds that there is very little that a travel journalist does that non-professional travel writer could not do. The most clear differences are journalistic ethics and allegiance to their publisher.

At the same time, travel journalists adopt characteristics of bloggers, including moving towards more personal writing and lowering reporting standards. Though they identify themselves separate from non-professionals, travel journalists may become an endangered species in the digital age filled with blogs and user-generated content, the article states.

The article “Travel Journalists and Professional Identity”  was recently published in Journalism Practice. It is available online (free abstract).

Picture: Paris by Moyan Brenn, licence CC BY 2.0