After attending Intrepid’s first Diversifying Travel Media trip to Croatia as a mentor, Adventure.com senior editor Meera Dattani reflects on the importance of this initiative and why it was a game-changer. The stories written by the four mentees are also now published on Adventure.com.
Last year, I was asked by Intrepid if I’d be a mentor on their first ever Diversifying Travel Media press trip to Croatia. It was not something I was going to say no to; in the United Kingdom, 2022 data showed that 90 percent of people employed as journalists or newspaper and periodical editors in the UK were university-educated, 88 percent were white, and 80 percent had a parent in one of the three highest occupational groups. You can’t correct it all at once, but you can play your small part in changing the landscape.
As a freelance writer, an avid reader, and a commissioning editor, I know the value of having a broad range of voices write about the world. It makes for a greater variety of more interesting stories; stories that might not have crossed your radar otherwise; stories you know of but that took on a new meaning when pitched differently; and stories you never even realized were a story until someone showed you how it looked through their lens.
Judging the applications was tough. It wasn’t just about who wanted to be a travel writer. We wanted to find four people who, regardless of bylines and experience, had a knack for the craft and who would benefit from this extra step of attending a press trip and mentoring. I hope it goes without saying that there were more than four great candidates, but with only four places, we had to keep whittling away at that list.
But together with fellow mentors Lottie Gross, Shafik Meghji and Georgina Lawton, we found four writers who we felt were at a stage where they’d genuinely benefit from the experience of a press trip—but also whose expectations and ambitions matched what we, as mentors, felt we could offer through our skills.
On Adventure.com, we love to publish stories from around the world, written by as diverse a pool of writers as possible. We also publish stories from relatively new writers who may only have a handful of bylines, as well as established writers who’ve written for National Geographic, AFAR, Wanderlust, BBC Travel, and many other publications that we at Adventure.com admire. I hope you’ll enjoy these four stories written by Chau-Jean Lin, Kira Richards, Sakhita Sharma and Queenie Shaikh, which you can find below.
Thanks to Intrepid for supporting such a brilliant initiative and for asking me to be part of it. Thanks to everyone who applied, fellow mentors Lottie, Georgina and Shafik for a fun trip (I picked up pitching and freelancing tips from you all, too), and especially Lottie for delivering/steering the afternoon workshop sessions, Intrepid’s Chloe Berman and Emme McKay (who came to Croatia) who ensured everything went to plan, our Croatian guide Pavle Ljubić, and above all, the four mentees Chau-Jean Lin, Kira Richards, Queenie Shaikh and Sakhita Sharma who were great company, asked insightful questions, adapted to the ‘full-on-ness’ of a press trip, and who’ve now written some top stories, both for Adventure.com and other publications.
There’s a reason we all remember events and conversations differently; we’re viewing the world through our own lens, formed of our own experiences and influences. That’s why having diversity in travel writing—or any writing, or any industry—matters, so we can also see the world through other people’s eyes.
** READ THE ARTICLES **
Chau-Jean Lin: Is it working? How Croatia’s Krka National Park is tackling overtourism
Kira Richards: Old is gold: The Croatian town that’s putting its centuries-old trades and crafts first
Queenie Shaikh: Acapella songs and Alpine views: How Croatia transported me to the Pakistan of my childhood
Sakhita Sharma: Back to basics: The couple who swapped city life for a Croatian ecotourism idyll
From stories about lemurs and the biodiversity crisis in Madagascar and London's South Asian food heritage to comment pieces on decolonizing and modernizing travel, Meera's bylines appear in publications such as BBC Travel, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveller, Travel Weekly and, of course, Adventure.com. She is a senior editor at Adventure.com and based in London.
