Writing

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Engagements

The Wall Street Journal

The top daily newspaper in the United States with an average print and digital circulation of 2.11 million readers, the May 7–8, 2011 Wall Street Journal devoted its back page to an article I wrote on Louisville as a travel destination—”Louisville, Ky.: Day at the Races” (online version, .pdf of print version).

Running on the day of the Kentucky Derby, the feature in the Journal’s Off Duty section included

• a 500-word essay sharing insider insight on Louisville
• the top local picks from notable Louisvillians: musician Jim James (lead singer of My Morning Jacket), novelist Sue Grafton, chef Edward Lee, and hotelier Laura Lee Brown (owner and curator of 21c Museum Hotel)
• a sidebar on five of my favorite local venues

I also assisted the editor and photographer with selecting subjects for the nine pieces of art that accompanied the article.

enRoute, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine

With a circulation of 141,000, enRoute’s print edition reaches 1 million travelers each month on their way to five continents with more people viewing its content at the magazine’s website. (For data about enRoute’s readership, please see its media kit.) In 2012, CNNGo recognized enRoute as world’s best airline magazine. While you can access all of my articles on this blog, sample engagements include

• “Hot Shot: A live volcano ignites our writer’s creativity at photo workshop in Hawaii“
• “Know When to Hold’em: Our writer heads to Las Vegas to master his po-po-poker face“
• “Painting the Town Red, White and Blue: Art-filled weekends in Dallas” (web exclusive)
• “Gladiator Training in Rome: From mere mortal to warrior? It’s all in a day’s work.” (web exclusive)
• “Four Family Friendly Hotels Stay Hip“
• “Four Spots to Catch World Cup Fever“
• “Our Favorite Freebies Around the Globe“
• “The World’s Wildest Ski Jumps“
• “Art Comes to the Aficionado at these Hotels“

AOL Travel

For more than 25 years AOL has been one of the best known brand names in the world. It helped the world get online, and built a reputation around safe and secure products and services. The AOL.com audience is well-balanced, matching the internet demographic at large. AOL.com has 12.7 million daily unique visitors. Engagements include

• “15 Reasons the Best Place in America to Start a Road Trip is Louisville, Kentucky“
• “Road Trip: Driving the American Horse Trail“
• “Flying With Kids: How to Avoid a Cataclysm in Seat 9B“

USA Today

As part of its digital content strategy, USA Today published a local guide to Louisville I wrote, along with a couple of photographs I snapped. The 3,500-word guide appears behind a walled garden for guests of Hilton Hotels (so I can’t include the text here, but you can select the photo for a screenshot of the guide’s front page). It covers restaurants, entertainment and nightspots, exercise venues, shopping, a trendy neighborhood, museums, the hip scene, spots unique to Louisville and a tip on how to sound like a local. The guide appears as part of USA Today Travel Media Group’s The Point property, a “firrst-of-its kind, fully integrated, multi-platform travel media experience for the hospitality industry. The Point offers hotel guests a unique blend of world, national and local news; local guides and tools, including top picks from local insiders, and premium digital entertainment content. This unique digital guest amenity is available through our launch partner, Hilton Worldwide.”

Fox News

FoxNews.com is the top-rated news website in both pages viewed per person and time spent on the site. It has 11.2 million users a month who view 429 million pages. On May  6, 2011 it published my article “Travel: Louisville in 5…”

Part of the travel section’s ongoing “In 5…” series, I profiled five horse racing-related activities travelers to Louisville can enjoy on non-Derby weekend visits. Along with the 1,200-word article, photos I took accompanied the piece.

My text and photos also were used in a Fox News video segment: “Louisville in 5.”

BlackBook

“BlackBook is the insider’s guide to where style and substance intersect in popular culture today. BlackBook provides sophisticated, relevant, and visually stunning takes on restaurants, nightlife, travel, fashion, Hollywood, entertainment, and the arts.” While you can read all of my articles on BlackBook’s site, sample engagements include

• “Jsix’s Christian Graves Gives Us His ‘Chef’s Kitchen Experience‘”
• “Steve Earle Lays It Down“
• “The Proud Junketeer: From Jamaica to China and Back“
• “Louisville Cool: The Hottest Parties of Kentucky Derby Week“

Gridskipper

“Gridskipper is a blog about travel and leisure, written especially for urban dwellers who appreciate the need to get off the grid from time to time. The site’s strength is its city-specific maps—from the best bistros in Paris to the sexiest beaches in Sydney.” (For data about its readership, please see its audience demographics survey.) Currently it’s owned by the Curbed Network, but I also wrote for Gridskipper when it was part of the Gawker Media network. While you can read all of my articles on Gridskipper, sample engagements include

• “Shenzhen, China: More Than Just A Good Place To Jump To Your Death“
• “Six Jerusalem Spas Fit For Your Resurrection“
• “The Week-Old Hotel Palomar“
• “Live Like Caravaggio In Modern-Day Rome“
• “The Sex and Swingers Clubs of the DC Area“
• “DC Restaurants That Made Me Sick“
• “Where to Buy Crack in Northwest DC“

Louisville Magazine 

Louisville Magazine is a lifestyle and general-interest monthly magazine for residents of metropolitan Louisville. The magazine has won hundreds of awards for writing, photography and design from the Society of Professional Journalists and is widely recognized as the city’s best and most influential magazine.” It has an in-home subscriber base of more than 20,000, average monthly circulation of 24,000, and a four-edition cumulative readership of more than 130,000 metro area residents. Engagements include

• “The Deerslayer,” a 3,000-word feature that includes a full-page photo I took (as well as my print modeling debut)
• “Pony Excess“
• “The Fantasy Restaurant Draft“
• For “138 Reasons We Love Derby” coverage package, “What’s Mine Is Theirs“
• “Reverse Dieting at the Deen“
• For “Why Basketball Is Bigger in Kentucky” cover package, “Because UK and UofL fans love to hate each other” and “Because you’ll go ballistic when you read this”

HILuxury

Catering to Hawaii’s luxury markets, HILuxury features articles on fashion, travel, homes, dining, cars, and social gatherings. Filled with stunning fashion spreads, the latest dining spots, and insightful interviews, HILuxury is the connoisseur of Hawaii’s finer things and more. A bimonthly publication, its circulation of 20,000 is targeted towards readers who are influential and armed with discriminating tastes. Engagements include

• “Roping in the Big Sky: Imbibing the Ranch at Rock Creek”
  

Louisville Bride

Published semi-annually in January and July, Louisville Bride has all the information a local bride-to-be needs to plan the perfect wedding and honeymoon. Its circulation is 30,000 issues. The publication is included with subscriptions to Louisville Magazine and available at 50 local bridal shows and many bookstore newsstands and wedding-related retailers. Engagements include

• “From Here to Where? Honeymoon Destinations: Nantucket.“
• “Honey Moon Destinations: The Ranch at Rock Creek, Montana“

CheapOair

With traffic ranked in the top 200 websites in the United States by Quantcast, more than 300,000 travel consumers a day visit CheapOAir. Its home page alone has more than 3 million page views a month. While you can read all of my articles on CheapOair, sample engagements include

• “Airplanes That Don’t Crash Prove Most Popular with Summer Travelers”
• “Your ‘Mom’s House’ Proves to be a Popular Travel Destination”
• “In the Ritz-Carlton Beijing did Kubla Khan a Stately Pleasure-Dome Decree”

UpTake

“UpTake.com is a travel search and discovery site –the first step for travelers to decide where to go, where to stay or what to do. The overall site has 4 million visitors a month while the blog has 150,000 readers. Its target market is women with families, age 30 to 55 who plan travel.” While you can read all of my articles on UpTake, sample engagements include

• “Economy Inn in Louisville: For When You Need Flexibility (or Meth)“
• “Hotel Byblos in Saint-Tropez Offers Luxury Accommodations on the French Riveria–Just Not to Me“
• “Business Class on Cathay Pacific from New York to Hong Kong: The Winged Child of a Hostel and a Ritz-Carlton“
• “Chicago’s Hotel Monaco Offers Great Views from Warm, Chic Rooms“
• “Bloody Bed Sheets and Accusations of Quickies at the West Yarmouth, Mass. Econo Lodge“
• “Relax at The Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach and Eau Spa“

Other engagements

• BudgetTravel.com, the website of Budget Travel magazine: “10 Engaging Spots for Popping the Question“
• Deadspin, the Gawker Media network’s sports website: A two-part feature on the 2008 NFL Pro Bowl
• Louisville.com: Four articles per week on arts and entertainment in Louisville (I’ve since become the site’s editor-in-chief)
• Examiner.com: 92 articles as the Louisville Travel Examiner
• The 20-page program for Abbey Road on the River 2011, the world’s largest Beatles festival
• Medical News newspaper: A cover story on the future of the VA Medical Center in Louisville
• Backstreets, a quarterly magazine that focuses on Bruce Springsteen and related Jersey Shore artists: An article examining the real-life implications of Iraq War-related themes in Springsteen’s music

To contact me about an assignment, please e-mail zach@zacheverson.com.