Three tips on writing for Lonely Planet

(This post is specifically for my fellow students in Writing and Editing for Digital Media.)

(Image by Vladimir Menkov)

If you have chosen Lonely Planet Destinations to write stories for Assignment 3 Part 1, you might think that all of the substantial writing on the site is similar to this article on Hawaii for Beach Haters. In some ways it looks like content from a Lonely Planet book. Three features are particularly relevant to our assignment:
 

1. There is no standfirst.
2. The photos have been taken by Lonely Planet photographers, so there are no issues with copyright.
3. All links our internal to the Lonely Planet website.

Writing for Lonely Planet doesn’t have to be like this, however. The Tips & Articles cover a wide variety of writing styles, much like weblogs. This four day guide to Hawaii uses external links to entities that Lonely Planet doesn’t have pages for. This list of ten most common bar snacks in Rio uses images sourced from Flickr. I haven’t found a page that uses a standfirst, though.

I’ve discussed the above with Sarah and she agrees that this is what you can do if you choose to write for Lonely Planet:

1. You don’t have to write a standfirst (but try and choose a site that does use standfirsts for Part 2).
2. You can use Creative Commons-licensed images. Make sure the image links back to the image page, and the caption provides an attribution to the image owner that links back to her or his profile page. (Images licensed for non-commercial use only are acceptable for this assignment. We are not actually writing for Lonely Planet.)
3. You can link to an external sites if Lonely Planet does not have suitable pages.

Good luck, and remember, the assignment is due this coming Tuesday, 12 October!

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