After several all-nighters, countless cups of coffee and very, very little sleep, it's finally done! I have just handed in my dissertation for the B.A. (Hons) degree in Travel Journalism.

"In what ways do travel magazines define their readership and how does their style and content refelct this? An analysis of the travel market" was my topic, and I looked at travel magazines Wanderlust, Lonely Planet Magazine, The Sunday Times Travel and National Geographic Traveler in terms of writing style, features, pictures, colours and advertising, to find their readership. For this I also had to know how market segments can be defined and what methods are used.

In total, I have written 15.938 words, excluding quotes, abstract, declarations, lists, captions and references. 60 pages including the cover, and the overall word count of everything I have written is 19.028.

I found that I had to cut a lot out. Writing the Literature Review, and the first few chapters explaining Market Segments, Travel Writing and Magazine Style was pretty straight-forward, based on quotes and my own interpretations. However, the four case studies were not that easy to write. I did one after the other, so I wouldn't get confused with the magazines. I looked at each one from many different angles, and really had to focus so I wouldn't write too much. The hardest part was then to link it all up, compare, contrast and add quotes and references to earlier chapters. I found that nailing down a specific readership is not possible in most cases, even though every book on the subject advises editors to have a very clear reader profile in mind when designing the publication.

I actually finished my dissertation in the early hours of yesterday. However, I still had to write an abstract, which took me most of the day, as I had to sum up nearly 16.000 words in 250 words or less.

Once the results are published, I will publish my dissertation for you to judge!

When writing a dissertation, one thing that has to be included is a Literature Review.


I am currently writing mine, and it took me a while to figure out how exactly I should be going about it. I've read all the books, and I copied all the quotes and page numbers I need, but to then put everything down on paper and not go "He said this, and he said that" is quite tricky.


I got a brilliant piece of advice: Go book by book. Look at your quotes and notes, then close the book and write what you think it means, and what you noticed about it.


Once that is done, you can go back and look for themes, and mix and match your several pieces of reviews to turn it into one well-organised one.

My own, until now, goes something like this:

Photography plays a major role in what we perceive as gaze-worthy. The photos show us an “ideal” view, which we then try to find ourselves (Urry 1996: 86). These photographs help us form ideas about what a place will look like, what it is like there and what there could be to experience. Pictures are also used as proof, that a place really is as it was described. As Sontag (1979: 109) is quoted in Urry (1996: 139):

“Photography seems to be a means of transcribing reality. The images produced appear to be not statements of the world but pieces of it, or even miniature slices of reality. A photograph thus seems to furnish evidence that something did indeed happen – that someone really was there and that the mountain actually was that large. It is thought that the camera does not lie.”


I guess, depending on the amount of books you've read, it will take the better part of an afternoon or even day to write the review. But then again, it is a vital piece of the dissertation, so it shouldn't be rushed and it should be precise. You don't have to use all the quotes - you can use some in the later chapters of your dissertation, to make a point, for example.

...yeah, as if!

My third year at university has only just started, and already I feel kinda overwhelmed by the whole "Write your dissertation"-situation. I am trying to really put in a lot of effort this year, copying lecture notes, doing all the necessary reading etc. and I'm fine with that. But when it comes to my dissertation - the thing I've been working towards for the last 2 years - I don't know where to start.

I know what I want to write about. I'd love to compare different travel magazines and newspaper travel supplements and determine how their content, style, tone, symbolism, semantics relate to their readership. I want to look at it both from a journalistic point of view (ie styles etc.),but also from a marketing point of view; analysing how readers can be split up into different market segments, what would appeal to these segments and whether they overlap or not. Is there a segment missing? Then why is that? And do travel publications vary from country to country? I want to find out, whether Britain, as an island nation, developed a different travel market than for example Germany, which has 9 land borders.

The problem is: I can't word my question. And without one, I can't work. Don't get me wrong, I've done my research proposal, I'm halfway through my literature review - but I need to formulate my question in order to get started. I'm the same in journalism. I need my headline first, to give me an angle on the story, to focus. At the moment, I feel like I'm hanging in limbo. If you have any suggestions, on how to put all that into a proper, academic-sounding dissertation topic, let me know!

I know I'll need to write about 10,000 words (without counting quotations) until mid-March and that I'll have to write a certain number of words per day or week to get there. We get tutorials at uni, on how to reference in the Harvard-System, but what I for one need, would be a look at a previous dissertation. How did they lay it all out? Did they include an appendix? How structured were the dissertations? I know that this is just about style, but once again, this helps me focus and getting the job done.

Over the next week, I'll have to read the books (including the ones about writing dissertations - like the "15 mins a day" one) and make a start. Get my first few paragraphs on paper. March seems miles away from now, and yet I know it'll come around too soon!

Wish me luck!

I will be starting my third and final year at the University of Cumbria is two weeks' time. Since the end of Year Two, I have been wondering what I could write my dissertation about. I knew I wanted to write about travel journalism, after all, I'm doing a B.A. degree in the subject, but I couldn't come up with a decent question.

When I had to write a Research Proposal at the end of Year Two, my question was this: "Are travel blogs replacing guidebooks as the main source of travel information?" However, I am not really interested in online journalism and didn't particularly like the qustion. I mean, after all, when you write your bachelor thesis about a topic, you should be interested in it, and not bored before you even start writing.

My new question will be: "In what ways does travel writing in the United Kingdom differ from journalistic convention in Germany?" The good thing is, I can use most of the books I already reviewed and I can write about the differences in journalism that I witness everytime I go home and work at my local paper in Germany.