Randy Johnson’s passion for the outdoors has inspired countless articles and award-winning guide and other books to the nation’s most popular national parks and the South’s increasingly sophisticated winter resorts. A widely published freelancer for newspapers and magazines in his early career, then editor of United Airlines award-winning Hemispheres magazine from the 1990s to mid- 2000s, he helped define the inflight genre.
Join me—Preserving Grandfather Mountain in PBS NC’s 2025 “My Home NC” program.
What got you into travel journalism?
Wilderness preservation and management. I first started writing about backcountry recreation and research, then found myself proposing a wilderness management program that preserved public access to Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina (now a high point of the Blue Ridge Parkway experience, the country’s most visited unit of the NPS). The private mountain had been closed to the public due to a hiker death from hypothermia—and I persuaded the owner to reopen it and permit me to manage the trails. The successful management scheme kept the trails open while the final part of the Parkway was built across the mountain, and from then till 2009, when the owners sold the peak to the NC State Parks.
What’s the most challenging part of being a travel journalist?
Today it’s adapting to the dramatic evolution of media outlets for travel writers. “Same as it ever was” but arguably more challenging than ever.
What is the most rewarding aspect of travel journalism?
For me, that means debunking stereotypes. Often about the South, its culture and climate. That continues to connect me to my passion for the grandeur of nature, including the Southern Appalachian world. My latest NATJA award, a gold in “Adventure Travel” for “The Backcountry Beckons”, in a glossy regional magazine named WNC, is an example. NC’s mountains, the highest in the East, are a national draw, but post-Helene, there are surprising dangers. I wanted to convey how they can be mitigated by understanding the storm’s impact and the task facing all the volunteers who’ve been clearing our trails. Those volunteers include me, working to open North Carolina’s increasingly famous Mountains-to-Sea Trail, connecting the Blue Ridge Parkway across the state to the Outer Banks.”
What is something you wish people knew about travel journalism?
“Travel journalism” is different from the shallow “listicals” you see spun off by so many publications. No offense, but many pander to a “Top Five” mentality with no true mission or basis beyond eye candy for the Internet. Suddenly, Western North Carolina is on more such superlative lists than most places—which given the plight of Helene might not be all bad.
How have your cross-cultural experiences shaped your point of view of the world?
Editing an international/global magazine like United’s Hemispheres (which recently was among the last to end its inflight print presence [search for 2024 articles in the Columbia Journalism Review and The Washington Post]), really brought home to me how “truly local” global really is. The reader response to our use of “resident local writers” all over the world really proved that travelers crave an “insider experience” that’s more than a turn of phrase (or an AI generated “listical”).
What have you enjoyed most about being a NATJA member?
That’s gotta be the camaraderie and communication with such a diverse group of professionals, sometimes in person, other times just through the newsletters, Travel World, or email. We’ve got an inspiring task if we make it one. It’s been a long time but that’s part of the tone I attempted to set when I was privileged to be the keynote speaker at NATJA’s first convention in Newport, RI.