You'll have to forgive us for "tooting our own horn", as that ancient saying goes, but we wouldn't be quite human if we failed to pay notice to two remarkable awards and recognitions that Frommer personnel and Frommers.com have just received from the prestigious Society of American Travel Writers. "S.A.T.W.." is the foremost organization of travel journalists in North America, and its yearly "Lowell Thomas Awards" are highly prized by travel writers, travel publications, and travel broadcasts across North America.
These Lowell Thomas awards (Lowell Thomas was an outstanding journalist of the 1940s and 1950s) were announced at the annual convention of S.A.T.W., held this year in Reykjavik, Iceland, and they were disclosed to us in a dramatic e-mail that we received from the Society's board early in the morning.
First, our own Jason Cochran, Editor-in-Chief of Frommers.com, was given first prize, the famous Gold Award, for having written the Best Guidebook of the Year, Frommer's EasyGuide to Walt Disney World and Orlando. This is the second time that a guidebook written by Jason has been honored in this fashion. In 2009, Jason won a similar Best Guidebook of the Year for his much-acclaimed (it was honored by other organizations as well) guidebook to London. And what is equally gratifying about this year's award by S.A.T.W. is that Jason is apparently the only travel writer to receive two such first-prize awards from S.A.T.W. for Best Guidebooks of the Year in a quarter century.
If you'd like to see the reasoning of the judges who made that award (the journalism department of the University of North Carolina, who performed that function for S.A.T.W.), you need only go to satwf.com.
So, heartiest congratulations to Jason Cochran, whose blogs and other comments appear every week on Frommers.com. We're proud to have him in our organization, which we think produces the best travel journalism in America (and Jason did not write this particular blog announcing the awards).
Second, Arthur Frommer and Pauline Frommer won First Price (the Gold Award) for presenting the Best Travel Broadcasts of the Year, on their Sunday afternoon (noon to two pm., Eastern time) radio program, syndicated nationwide to major stations across the country. If your own local radio station doesn't carry their contentious, argumentative (father versus daughter and vice versa) program, you can always hear it by simply going to Frommers.com and clicking on "Radio" at the upper right-hand corner of the main menu page. There, podcasts of recent broadcasts appear throughout the year.
So all in all, this has been quite a time for Frommer journalism. And we'll be working hard to win similar awards next year! Stay tuned.
