TravelMuse has an immediate opening for an Editorial Intern looking for online publishing experience. If you have a passion for travel, a nose for news reporting and trends, and a desire to work in a fast-paced start-up environment, then this could be the ideal opportunity for you!

Responsibilities:

• Copyedit and fact check travel articles and blog posts

• Write two posts per week for the TravelMusings blog

• Report and write two travel trend or round-up articles per month for the online magazine

• Write article heds, deks, descriptions and SEO (search engine optimized) fields

• Research and write destination descriptions

• Learn our CMS and enter articles and links into the database

• Assist with social media outreach

• Assist with industry research; some tracking and analysis of site usage for editorial projects

• Participate in weekly editorial meetings

Requirements:

• Strong proofreading, editing and writing skills

• Experience writing for an online publication (beyond personal sites or blogs), preferably for a newspaper or magazine

• A journalism, communications or English degree (or current study toward such a degree) is desired but not required, provided candidate has related internship or work experience

• Excellent organization skills, and be quick to pick up on editorial styles as well as software systems

• Be able to work independently and meet deadlines

• Knowledge and use of social media sites

• Knowledge of AP style is a plus

• Experience writing for SEO is a plus

• Must be available to work 20 hours per week on site in our Los Altos office

The position reports to the editorial director, works closely with the senior editor and pays $500 per month. The term is open.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, résumé and three published clips to editor@travelmuse.com with Editorial Intern in the subject line.

Applications must be received by Friday, May 1, 2009.

In February, as the market was tanking, there was a lot of talk about 2009 being the year of the “Naycation”—aka the Lost Year, The Travel Nuclear Winter, etc.

Should this come to pass, it would be even worse than 2008, which was deemed the year of the “Staycation” by many, e.g., when people chose places close to home to visit for a day or a single over-night stay instead of really getting out on the road exploring.

We conducted a travel survey because we wanted to test this Pollyannaish theory. Turns out that the Naycation is just that—a theory. The majority of respondents to our survey were willing to make big sacrifices in other parts of their lives in order to KEEP traveling. People remain adamant about maintain their right to travel—so much so that many are willing to forego or cut back on other “luxuries,” like new clothes, fancy dinners or spa treatments.

This travel-fighting spirit and resilience needed a name; hence, the term “Yaycation” was born.

Armed with this simple understanding, we decided to empower people with a tool to help them identify ways to trim their spending in order to save some real dough for traveling—the Yaycations Calculator. It helps individuals see how much they’re spending on lattes, lunches and more, and identify where they can cut back.

They can then parlay that “found money” into trips to amazing destinations. Check it out, and let us know what you think. Where do you want to go today?

Kevin & Eric