As the hardworking staff noted several months ago, the New York Times Journeys travel agency has faced an uphill battle selling out its Around the World by Private Jet: Cultures in Transformation.
Full-page from yesterday’s Times.
The 26-day, $135,000 jaunt by private chartered jet for a select 50 travelers is described by the website thusly:
Fly around the world in a customized Boeing 757 jet for the ultimate in luxury travel. Spend 26 days visiting such places as Israel, Cuba, Colombia, Australia, Myanmar and Iceland. Four award-winning New York Times journalists will accompany you, each for several days as you visit areas where they have expertise.
Said journalists who will accompany the luck 50 (or so):
But . . .
The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi asks whether the Times is “effectively selling its journalists to private interests? Could, for example, corporate lobbyists or political operatives sign on and seek to influence the Times’s coverage?”
Other media hall monitors note that these schmooze cruises happen all the time – from The Weekly Standard to the PBS NewsHour.
Regardless, you gotta wonder when the Times can’t sell out its highest-profile sellout, no?
Campaign Outsider 