From Staycation to "State Journalist," Tom Uhlenbrock Reclaims the Travel Beat

By Kristen Hinman Fri., Feb. 19 2010 at 10:10 AM

Categories: Follow That Story, Post-Dispatches

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Have station wagon, will travel.

Attention, unemployed journalists everywhere! Tom Uhlenbrock has figured out how you can keep your credibility and your expense account: Get hired by the government.

OK, it might not work for everybody, but it worked for the veteran travel writer. A month after being jettisoned from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's travel desk to its higher-ed beat, and then saying to hell with that, Uhlenbrock has become the state's first official journalist.

He now toils for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Division of State Parks and will be penning journalistic travel stories about public green spaces, replete with info about nearby b&bs, wineries, bike trails, etc. If there are problems with Porta-Pottys, you'll read about those too, says Uhlenbrock. "The last thing I want to do is put out puff pieces."

And here's the best part:

Uhlenbrock has access to a bigger expense account than he had working for the P-D/Lee Enterprises.

And, he'll never have to set foot on an airplane, what with the use of a state-owned Ford Taurus station wagon.

As Uhlenbrock puts it, "Sounds too good to be true!"