Here’s an interesting article from the just released Columbia Journalism New York Review of Magazines:
Paradise Lost – How Asian tourism magazines survived in the wake of the tsunami (PDF)
Author Emily Waltz spoke with editors from three Asian travel mags (Phuket Magazine, DestinAsian and Farang Untamed Travel) about the challenges they faced and the strategies they used in the months and weeks after the tsunami disaster.
Kerrie Hall, managing editor of Phuket Magazine wondered, “…how she and her staff could write stories in the paradise-on-earth style typical of travel magazines when the rest of the world was mourning hundreds of thousands of dead people.”
The article explains that each magazine used different tactics and thereby developed varied philosophies on how to respond to the catastrophe. Certain publications had to cut pages due to the loss of advertisers forced out of business by the tragedy and all did some sort of special section, report or feature related to the tsunami, while still focusing on their goal of promoting travel to the region.