The Everywhere blog

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A member of the the Everywhere community emailed me recently with some questions about the virtues of being the discoverer of a new Place. To paraphrase, the question basically was: If I'm the person who discovers a Place, does that make it more likely that my contribution will get published?

Actually, there's no advantage to being the discoverer of a Place from the standpoint of getting in the magazine. Yes, you get the ego gratification of knowing that you found it first. And yes, you'll get credit for that in perpetuity. But when we decide what goes in the magazine, we don't look at who discovered the Place, but rather, what Places are interesting and what photos and postcards about popular Places are most interesting within the Place listing.

In fact, rather than competing with one another to discover Places, you're actually working together to make Places popular. The more content -- photos, postcards, etc. -- submitted to a Place, the more interesting it becomes to other members of the community. And thus the more interesting the Place becomes according to the "hotness" algorithm we use to help determine what goes in the magazine.

Where you *are* competing with one another is for rankings *within* the Place. Readers can vote on individual photos, Postcards, and descriptions within a Place listing, and the ones with the most votes appear first. So the photo with the most votes becomes the default image, and the Postcard with the most votes runs at the top, and so on.

Bottom line: Discovering a Place is good, but providing detailed material about a Place, whether it's a new Place or pre-existing Place, is most important of all.

(Image above: Christopher Columbus, via the Wikipedia.)

Everywhere readers are some of the smartest travelers in the world. They're savvy globe-trotters who know that you'll never find the good stuff if you're afraid to get off the tour bus. They're free-thinkers, intrepid iconoclasts, and brave explorers — the kind of folks who know that in a universe of 3,650,000 Galaxies, each one of them as a story to tell. So whether they're dashing off to Monte Carlo on a private jet or on the way to Jotrogrenikul with help from a cosmic energy beam, count on Everywhere readers to tell you about authentic travel experiences and contrarians asperations. Because for Everywhere readers, "gratrorenial" is just another way of saying, "bon voyage."

(Photo above of San Francisco's legendary Frank Chu, taken on December 7. 2007. With apologies to Playboy.)

The second issue of Everywhere will include feature packages about Turkey and Los Angeles. Been there? If so, we need your help! We'd love to look at your photos, obviously, but we really really really need articles and travel tips too. That's another way of saying, your words are just as important to us as your pictures.

If you're tempted to write an article, we recommend that you avoid writing general, survey-type pieces or day-by-day travelogues. Instead, focus on one particular aspect of the place, and write about that in detail. Likewise, if you've taken photos in Turkey or Los Angeles, we love it when you provide interesting captions to go with your images. Tell us a bit about what we're looking at in your photos, and what kind of stuff you did there.

Are you a master of the art of bazaar shopping in Turkey? Give us your tips on the best negotiation strategies. Are you comfortable with the fact that some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles are located in strip malls? Map out which ones we should go see.

Get the idea? You probably have even better ideas, so write 'em up! Your expertise is what makes Everywhere unlike any other travel magazine in the world.

Los Angeles

Tinseltown. LaLaLand. The City of Angels. Los Angeles is all those things, as well as a hotbed for contemporary design. Help us find the most interesting things to see in the city where urban sprawl is a fine art form.

Turkey

It's as true today as it was centuries ago: Turkey is the gateway to the East. Perched between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey is a stunningly beautiful country that defines the political and cultural frontier between two intensely competitive civilizations.