Local news organizations, niche publications, and independent journalists or creators.

If your journalism focuses on a specific geographic area or distinct community, consider how tours might support your mission or strategic goals.

This guide focuses on a model for “tours-as-journalism” and how to plan and execute a pilot program to experiment with walking tours.

It includes five case studies from peers who do different types of tours. The guide provides a framework to help assess whether or not your organization should continue offering tours after the pilot.

It should take two to three hours to go through this guide. The sections are different lengths and the estimated reading time is noted below each one.

There are also activities along the way to help you go from idea to itinerary to tracking the impact of a tour pilot. Depending on your needs, you can spend more or less time on these.

Tours can be led by journalists, trained tour guides or volunteers. Depending on the structure, they could be managed by operations, events, membership or audience engagement roles.

Editorial participation in developing the tour content is important, even if it's not led by a journalist. Learn more about what makes a good tour guide in the “Practical Information” section.

Part of the appeal of tours is their flexibility. A tour program could scale to be offered seven days a week, with two dozen different tours, and 20,000 annual guests like Untapped New York (see the case study).

For another organization, tours might be a limited offering that happens seasonally or exclusively a member benefit. An individual might act as a guide, while working with partners who manage the tour operations (see case study with freelance writer David B. Williams).

Tours are prime for partnering with other organizations. That may be a historical society, local tourism bureau, a tour operator, museum or property owner. This guide includes several partnership examples, but like with each route, the structure will vary based on your news organization.

This can go either way, as highlighted in this guide’s case studies. Many independent news leaders and founders bring both to their work.

As journalists continue to strike out on their own, tours may be a natural extension of their expertise and personal brand. New and legacy publications can also extend their brand to tours, which many have already done with events and trips.

Self-guided tours, conveyed through permanent signage, books or digital experiences, are an option. However, this guide does not cover self-guided tours because I believe the in-person community engagement is a key benefit of the model.

Making tours accessible includes considering physical abilities, cost, transportation options, and guest comfort. This guide covers some of these practicalities, and part of the pilot process is identifying how to address and improve accessibility.

No! History is a big part of tours, and may fit nicely into your tour pilot. However, there’s plenty of current and recent information a tour can cover. See more about how much history to include in the “Getting There” section.

I would love to hear from you! Are you planning to launch a pilot? If not, why? And if you do a pilot, how did it go? 

In my research, I found only a handful of journalism organizations running tours, including my own. We all had learning to share, but there’s much more to learn. If more people test this model and share what you learn with A Tour Guide for Journalists, we can collectively keep building this resource.