Time to Go: Aspirational Framing and Place-Making in Domestic Travel Journalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent studies in lifestyle journalism point to the importance of aspiration as a guiding point for how practicing journalists report and present their stories. Aspiration emphasizes an ideal lifestyle, one that is potentially accessible and achievable via one’s life choices—specifically, consumer choices. In this study, I use existing literature on lifestyle journalism to develop the concept of an aspirational frame, an analytic tool specific to consumer-centric texts. I then use interviews with American travel media producers to explore how the aspirational frame is constructed within travel journalism, one subgenre of lifestyle journalism. Five elements of aspiration are discussed: accessibility, advice, aesthetics, authenticity, and discovery. Results show that authenticity is particularly prized by travel journalists in their work. Findings also highlight how time—specifically journalists’ awareness that their audiences must give up time in order to travel—influences production processes. Journalists seek to give audiences something of value in return for this time. Additionally, journalists seek to upend, rather than confirm, people’s preconceptions about places through their writing and photography.