A New Magazine for Travelers

Indie Travel Podcast Magazine cover

Destination: The World

Magazine: Indie Travel Podcast Magazine (Available September 1, 2009)

Don’t be put off by the title of this new travel magazine. Craig and Linda Martin, world travelers who started the award-winning Indie Travel Podcasts, a website and popular blog, are sticking to their brand name as they take the plunge into travel magazine publishing.

As they say in their premiere issue, “It’s never been a worse time to launch a travel magazine.” But then, they say to the naysayers, “Stuff it.”  The New Zealand couple traveled the world for three years. They presented podcasts and videos covering those travels. Now they want a platform to “showcase content in more depth.” And you do not need an I-pod to read the magazine.

The tone of the magazine (which I saw in a special on-line preview edition made available to bloggers) is cheerful, positive, adventurous, but practical. Enticing photography accompanies the brief articles. It comes in a free subscription for digital delivery, or a paid subscription paper edition.

Although photos in an on-line magazine look stunning on a computer screen, personally, I find it hard to get the balance between seeing the whole page on the screen and being able to read the print.  Generally, I give up on trying to see the whole thing, and do a lot of scrolling. On-line publishers have yet to lick this problem, so the Martins are wise to offer a print edition as an alternative.

Burma article

The subject matter of the first issue ranges over many areas. I’m strictly an armchair traveler when it comes to a place like Burma–particularly the northern region bordering China. Ryan Libre and Tim Patterson spent a month in territory controlled by the Kachin Independent Army, a Christian group fighting against the Burmese military government. I hoped to learn more about this struggle, but the report delivers a meditation on the author’s experience rather than showing  the experience. The great photos that accompanied the article, unfortunately are not captioned, so they did not advance my knowledge, either.

Undeterred, and drawn by the nifty layout and graphics and outstanding photography, I read on.  Of course, being A Traveler’s Library, I paused at the page that presents book reviews to see if there was some interesting new travel literature. Two were guidebooks that are valuable to know about a Rough Guide and a Lonely Planet Guide. The third, J. Maarten Troost’s Lost on Planet China, sounds like a book I might want to read. (Note to Linda and Craig–if the books reviews are going to be first person, they should be signed.)

In a related column, they review travel blogs, a useful piece for web surfer, travel buffs. And I loved the little extras inserted here and there, like how to say “I love you” in nine languages and a measurement conversion table.

Although the articles, mostly only one page long, and most of that page taken up by photographs, do not  fulfill the stated objective of “depth” in articles, this magazine shows great potential. If you want to read about some unusual places, and some new angles on usual places, then get on over to the Indie Podcast Magazine  subscription page and get your FREE issues delivered by e-mail or RSS to be read on the web, or pay for a real, honest-to-goodness, paper edition. And either way, thank Craig and Linda for being daring enough and/or crazy enough to launch a BRAND NEW TRAVEL MAGAZINE.

Tonga Article

Readers, I’m curious about your reading habits.  Obviously you read blogs on the web–but are their web zines that you read? Do you prefer paper or pixels? Let’s talk.

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Tags: Burma, Craig and Linda Martin, Indie Travel Podcast, Tonga, travel magazine