Fuzzy Out of Focus Photography

Travel & Leisure was once the best travel magazine. Now I rate it the worst. Endlessly trendy, hopelessly chic. It's fru-fru. My biggest complaint is the photography. Seems the editors have told their photographers to shoot only over-exposed, overly white fuzzy photos. And there is this irritating penchance for illustrating their articles with full page photos of local inhabitants. DUH! Thum through any issue at the newstand and see what I mean. Try "Conde Nast Traveler" instead.

For the $250,000+ a year club

Travel magazines have never catered to the common man, instead preferring the rarified air found around those living in million dollar homes and driving Porsches with model numbers we've never heard of before. "Travel + Leisure" is no exception to this rule.

One would think that the editors would have toned down the chic and trendy during the economic downturn, but instead they seem to have ratcheted up the lust level another notch. A quick scan of the price tags attached to the luxuries described within "T+L's" pages will find most of the recommendations to be out of reach of mortal men. And don't get me going on the ads, either.

This is not to say that "T+L" is a bad magazine. If your idea of a family vacation is Monte Carlo, then it works beautifully. It does a wonderful job making people's mouths water over what is offered out there in the big, beautiful world. But if your idea of a getaway is Gatlinburg, you'll get nothing but a case of envy reading this magazine.

As for the actual content of the magazine, it suffers from "USA Today" syndrome: limited, perfunctory articles. The content resembles nothing more than a hodgepodge of tidbits. Many magazines today have this problem, though. Blame it on short attention spans. Or possibly that the world is a big place and too much specificity on one location would make the mag less useful for a broad audience. But with the demographic of "T+L", I think the target audience would appreciate knowing more.

"T+L" certainly has some plusses, with the best being the photography. This is a handsome magazine. But it is a "B-level" handsome and not an "A". There are more elite magazines that look even better.

In the long run, though, the negatives outweigh the positives. One of my biggest beefs with "T+L" is the sheer onslaught of ads. A random flip through its pages will almost always land you on an ad rather than actual useful content. Given that ad revenue at magazines is down, I guess a plethora of ads is a sign of the magazine's health, but still. Don't we buy magazines to read articles that are useful?

As far as competition, Conde Nast's "Traveler" comes to mind. Having read the two, I think I might lean toward "Traveler" as the superior magazine. My admittedly faulty memory has me remembering that it has a tad more depth in its articles and a higher "signal to noise ratio" of content to ads than "T+L".

If you are a daydreamer, get "T+L" simply for the "what-if" possibilities. But if you are like me, save the money you would have spent on "T+L" and use it to get away for a couple days with the Mrs. to a nice, local B&B once in a while.

Beautiful, but...

T&L is a visually appealing travel mag, but they seem to be slipping on the editorial side lately. I'm always enticed at the newstand to pick it up and flip through, but I find myself buying less and less these days, because there isn't as much substance behind it as there used to be.

The rare times that I do buy is when there's an article about an area that I'm about to go to, or want to go to. Even in these cases, I find that some research online, augmented by CN Traveler, does the job much more efficiently. Don't get me wrong; I still *like* T&L; it's just that most of the value I get from it can be much more effectively accessed on their Web site, under 'destinations.'

If you want a useful travel magazine, try CN Traveler. If you want eye candy for travel, I'd suggest something like Wallpaper (alas, they've somewhat fallen off the pedestal as well, but that's a different review...).