Why Do People Still Think They Can "Make It" in Food and Travel Writing?

Being realistic about chasing the dream

Hi everyone,

Taking a giant left turn from the emotionally, mentally, and spiritually suffocating events of the past few weeks to talk about another topic on heavy rotation: what success means in food and travel writing.

This week, Alicia Kennedy’s latest newsletter highlights a number of grievances being aired by food writers across Substack—most of whom I have never heard of, but all seem to have fantastic engagement from thousands of followers—all lamenting about the shared struggles of being freelance food writers and content creators who can barely afford to live.

The struggle is certainly real, something Kennedy has been pretty transparent about herself over the past several years, and therefore should not come as a surprise to anyone trying to shoot their shot in the industry. Yet, somehow they always are.

Fortunately, you’re reading a newsletter called Pipe Dreams, so it’s time to crack my knuckles and give my two cents that no one asked for!

Every time one of these articles is published, it’s always filled with someone shrieking “media is crumbling!” and “this unsustainable as a career!” as if all of this is some new phenomenon that hasn’t been going on for over two decades now and can only be saved with more people paying into the next wave of struggling writers and content creators (I swear, modern publishing feels like a MLM scheme). And every single time, I find myself scoffing, having a hard time empathizing with writers who are blessed with Google to instantly glean their future career outlook in a matter of seconds.

While I hate to be that person yelling at the kids from my lawn chair, it’s worth reminding everyone that there were no thinkpieces on nepotism in the industry when I was in j-school nor did I have a family accountant or someone looking out for me when I found myself getting financially screwed over more than once. I learned everything from my own mistakes—which were often very costly and stressful. In the words of my aunt: “Who told you that you could make money being a writer?” Well, shoot.

In fact, back in 2018 (on April 29, actually), I sat on a panel at Kennedy’s Food Writing Workshop, which was an ambitious attempt to create an affordable conference for those who wanted to dip their toes into the chaotic, frequently unrewarding, and usually unforgiving world of professional food writing. As someone who had made the switch to trade pretty early on in my career, I had a somewhat different perspective coming from Chicago, home to an iconic journalism industry with its own deeply tenured grip on coveted positions and media landscape that was crumbling by the time I was commissioned my first byline two decades ago.

Sharing tips to a room full of desperately ambitious food writers on how to manage their invoices and billing, I enthusiastically reminded everyone that, as someone who had spent my teen years frequently unhoused and finished high school thanks to my friends parents who took me in, the idea of sleeping on the unheated floor of a friend’s band practice space so I could go to my unpaid internship in 2007 seemed par for the course to get my foot in the door doing literally anything. Again, this was in Chicago because even then, I couldn’t afford to move to New York, let alone work for free. Obviously, this was not the case for many others, including some popular names you are probably intimately familiar with now, who all attended very nice liberal arts schools on their parents’ dime to earn the type of rich condensation that would serve them well for years to come.

Working two jobs in college on top of my financial aid package, it was obvious that some of my fellow students weren’t doing that and able to allocate their free time and parental funding to completely devote themselves to hard hitting journalism to obtain the unpaid internships at top-tier publications. Even before I even went into j-school, I realized life isn’t fair, nepotism happens, and some people just have an upper hand at gaming the system that require the average person working 10x harder and demonstrating some form of exceptionalism to get ahead.

Again, none of this is new. This was 2003. If you were a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, you knew your options: study hard and get the scholarships or don’t and continue to work at some bullshit job. Mommy and daddy are not coming to bail you out.

But no one likes to hear this. It’s not inspiring; it’s realistic. People read lifestyle magazines for escapism, which is aspirational and allows them to believe if they buy everything in GOOP that they’ll live for eternity with the all of the riches afforded for a charmed life. And if they move to New York City, maybe they can live that Carrie Bradshaw dream after all. If they wanted to read about constant tragedy and labor laws, they’d stick to academia, where they’d still be broke, but also miserable. Point being: realism kills dreams, which is why I smoke a lot of weed because I like to keep the spirit alive of believing that my dreams still matter, even as I edge closer to death every single day.

Because the economy tanked as soon as I graduated, I would spend my days working at Kaplan University as a file clerk then split time working closing shifts between my two hospitality jobs as a hostess at a wine restaurant (because I wanted the formal wine education) and at a casual New American restaurant serving salads and burgers, while sometimes taking on a fourth or fifth job as a receptionist temp at real estate firms or signing up to be a brand ambassador for experiential marketing companies (an era I still feel deep sadness thinking about). With three to five jobs under my belt, I would use whatever free time was left to pitch local publications and launched a brunch blog to get my name out, and that’s how I afforded being a freelance food writer on the side back in 2010. Over the past two decades, not much has changed.

You’d think the struggle is over once you get your foot in the door, but it’s not. My first gig was with NBC Universal for a now-defunct publication called The Feast. As one of the first four market editors, I made a whopping salary of $38,000 that was entirely W-9 with no benefits or dining budget, and told to keep that on the down low because apparently that was more than the other editors were making. Because it was W-9 and I was young and stupid, I also didn’t realize that meant I was responsible for paying all of my taxes on that paltry salary. Lo and behold, I owed the government a considerable amount of money by the following tax season—not fun!

The blog was an early competitor to Eater and GrubStreet models, so the idea was to amplify everything to "keep our fingers on the pulse.” Unlike Eater, we subscribed to the Oprah model, where “everything is good,” but ultimately that really didn’t matter because this became a ferociously cut-throat “community” (if you will) where chefs were the local celebrities and manufacturing drama was the name of the game. One former editor, who is now a regular staff writer at the New Yorker, came up with a fun idea to post tweets every 15 minutes from celebrity chefs. If you’ve ever worked with a content management system and editorial team, you should recognize this is not only an insane request but antithetical to what food media should be: a monthly publication with recipes and entertaining ideas designed to inspire housewives.

There were also unexpected issues, such as: getting blacklisted by Michelin (true story!), being yelled at by fine dining chefs that everyone was too afraid to call out for professional reasons, and having honest reviews I wrote pulled from publications—something that never seemed to happen to all the snarky male writers when they did it. You’d think the sisterhood is strong in food media, but women were just as likely to throw you under the bus while talking shit about you behind your back. Of note: if someone is talking shit about someone else with you, you can be sure that they’re probably talking shit about you, too, which you will undoubtedly hear about from a third party that probably has also talked shit about you because that’s how petty everyone was.

Somehow in the course of two years at this start-up publication, I found myself working on average 60-hours a week, expected to use press comps to dine out (discreetly, since we were operating under some wonky definition of editorial integrity), so that I couldn’t go on a date without the chef coming out to talk to me. That would be a nice perk under any normal circumstance, but became an awkward lack of separation in my personal and professional life. Everyone knew everyone’s business, and that was definitely an underlying appeal of moving to New York City: no one cares unless you want them to, and even then, they often don’t.

Around this time, I started discovering that most of my New York counterparts were able to be workhorses because they weren’t living off of the $38,000 salary. They were actually living off of their parents’ money, affording them things like a two-bedroom condo on the Lower East Side and state-of-the-art cameras to go above and beyond at their day jobs, and because they worked in-house, they were on W2 and had health benefits that I did not. Later on, I’d learn that this quite common in the industry, as many were supplemented by parents or spouses so that they could easily front the costs for food and travel writing at publications like the New York Times that don’t allow press comps. Do the math and you’ll realize that what you’re getting paid doesn’t match up to the lifestyle you’re promoting.

Even though we worked the same amount of hours, the New York editors had certain advantages, including schmoozing proximity with other top media houses and writers. So, the week I happened to be in New York when upper management issued a notice that they were shutting down the publication and that we had exactly 48 hours to salvage two years of work before it was deleted, every single one of my New York colleagues had instantly found refuge at Conde Nast and Vox publications (nee New York Media) where their salaries were bumped up and they were given all of the perks you’d expect for managing a well-funded lifestyle publication within an inherently toxic environment. Interestingly, none of these people are working in food editorial anymore, which just goes to show the longevity of these positions. But most of them are fine because they married well.

(I’m not even going to dive into the horror stories I’ve heard from my former colleagues who all worked there — we all know the grass is not always greener on the other side. I once had a fight Conde Nast with legal action over trying to issue a 25% kill fee on a $400 story about mushroom coffee that I had done additional reporting and edits on, until they reneged and paid in full after going through three tiers of legal departments and threatening to pull in the Better Business Bureau and Freelancers Union).

Since I was still in Chicago, I was left with very few options. Though Chicago’s food media was actually pretty robust at the time, it was not very fluid in terms of job openings and certainly not lucrative. Realizing that money was a path to freedom, I started leaning back into my marketing skills and found a rare opportunity to help launch a restaurant trade magazine at a content marketing publishing house. I remembered feeling quite embarrassed at the time because both myself and the art director, who had come from Chicago Magazine, absolutely despised the name of the publication and its branding that were conceptualized with the directive that it should be “edgy.” Color us both surprised when the magazine won a bunch of awards the first year.

You might wonder why I stayed at that publication for over four years, and the answer is that I softened my ego and expectations. I started to embrace the parts of the job that were actually so much cooler than being part of the fancy name publications. Namely, the corporate funding for ongoing advanced education that allowed me to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Flavor conference in Napa, take part in lectures at the James Beard House, and go on a whirlwind press trip with the Maine Lobster Board, National Pork Board conferences, attend Food & Wine in Aspen, travel to Maui with the Certified Angus Beef, or visit Languedoc-Roussillon with their wine board. These are all very sexy perks that came with the caveat of spending 95% of your time buttoned up because you’re working, not on vacation, and you probably couldn’t afford a vacation like that on the salary you’re making as a food editor anyway—even in trade.

But because it was trade, no one cared about us. I no longer had to deal with the internal politics of being brushed over by fellow writers and editors keeping their thumb over me while advancing their favorite literary world darlings with zero experience in food writing year after year, reminding me that no matter what I did, I was doomed to never achieve my goals. This was fine because the people working in trade were actually quite genuine and we were all friendly with each other. The privilege of sleeping in a luxury hotel while drinking bottles of wine older than I was from the personal reserve of the Delta’s wine director while going to the Worlds of Flavor conference was also a nice perk — something I’d never do if I was working at Bon Appetit.

That said, not every writer can do this job, which I understood at the time because I edited them. Not everyone had the business sense to understand what matters to key stakeholders invested in running a professional restaurant nor the grasp on language that needed to be used to speak to chefs, let alone how to manage budgets and contracts, oversee a professional shoot, or work with a team to produce a final project. Many writers—more than you’d think—can barely meet a deadline on something that pays generously at $1/word or fulfill basic requirements on an assignment without subtweeting what a bitch you are for calling them out on it as you pick up their slack.

Still, this was how I was able to hold onto higher rates because it was a specialized job that needed me as much as I needed them. Doing this afforded me a stable salary with benefits so that I was no longer chasing checks, and every once in awhile if I felt like taking on freelance assignments there were no non-compete issues. This allowed me to pick up opportunities like becoming the contributing restaurant and hotel editor for Fodors Travel or penning features for CNN Travel that earned me my first James Beard nomination right before I wrote my first book. It took me over a decade to get to that point, and when I did, I still found myself making $12,000 the year I wrote my book and deeply in debt fronting the costs on my $6,000 advance. This wasn’t because I wasn’t a good business person at that time or without enough bylines or talent. It was because the profit margin had been depleted.

Obviously when the pandemic happened, that didn’t help anyone in food media — unless you were a content creator. As print media has struggled, a new avenue was opening for independent content creators via blogging and social media in the great Pivot-To-Video Era. The caveat, of course, of absorbing 10 peoples jobs into a one-stop shop is that it is unsustainable. Just because you can videotape yourself being a food stylist and on air personality who can craft social media copy, graphics and blogs doesn’t mean you should. Many creators don’t have the insight to look at what they are doing as a business or recognize that the ease in which they have been granted their digital platforms are a direct reflection of the depletion of an existing revenue model that supported many and even then, was not a huge moneymaker. Most of the creatives running these content production services are not business-oriented people and don’t consider the costs that go into running a business until it is too late.

A monthly magazine includes paying out writers, editors, photographers, stylists, designers, assistants and ad people, plus all of the costs that go into that, including groceries, plateware, backdrops, software, etc. Magazines were typically supported through a combination of readership subscriptions and advertisements based on that audience. Without the advertising backbone or the readership buy-in, no one gets paid. With metrics, however, independent content creators could essentially build their own platforms without the middle man! It’s a great idea until you remember that, again, you are doing at least 10 peoples jobs and not being paid for it.

For whatever reason, Gen Z seems to be appalled that nepotism exists and that money doesn’t grow on trees, even this has always been the case particularly in lifestyle. Millennials should be beyond jaded about this by now as we were among the first who were expected to be writers, videographers, photographers, social media managers, and project managers for the gift of exposure in this digital era. Then, after a decade of being infantilized as shallow avocado toast eating slackers, we were swiftly ushered out so that a new generation could complain about being broke as they buy another pair of designer shoes and have ChatGPT write about how sad they are.

Today, I see so many creative people flexing their talents on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Substack and anywhere else they can make their mark. And if they do it right and succeed, they can hobnob their way into brand sponsorships that provide opportunities like brunch with Stanley Tucci and Selena Gomez, while being coy about how much money they are actually making. But getting there is now a huge investment in production value that doesn’t always pay off, particularly if you aren’t able to make that gamble on a food and travel writer paycheck. Everyone else gets to write a disgruntled article about the real cost of labor and burn out as if they are the very first and that this was not a choice, but a calling.

I think on a good day, my Substack newsletters might receive maybe 3 likes tops even though my open rate is around 50% on average and can’t be promoted on social media because of the weed stuff. I have a positively received book, a James Beard nomination, and a pretty colorful resume. By all means, this should be a marker of success, but if I was starting my career today based solely on my newsletter, it wouldn’t be. And don’t get me wrong: realizing there is a cap on success is a very bitter pill to swallow. I really don’t like to kill dreams, even my own. But there is something to be said about being realistic, counting your blessings, and accept that while it’s possible to make things work as a food and/or travel writer, it’s always smart to remember that there’s a reason why lifestyle is an aspirational pipe dream and not quit your day job.

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