What it means for us right now.
Last November, we published our first-ever print magazine at Roads & Kingdoms, and this past Saturday the James Beard Foundation honored it with the award for food coverage in a general interest publication, the only journalism award given for overall coverage.
While we try not to put too much stock in awards, this one feels particularly meaningful. Roads & Kingdoms, Issue 1 marks our return to publishing after a long silence following the death of our partner, Anthony Bourdain. In the wake of his passing, the prospect of running a sustainable journalism enterprise in an increasingly hostile media environment felt all but out of reach.
So we created the League of Travelers to bring people into the worlds we’d been writing about in our first decade of existence. That endeavor, and the incredible community that formed around it, created the stable base that ultimately allowed us to return to the kind of independent journalism that was always at the center of who we are.
And now here we are, a new kind of travel and media company, somehow still out here fighting the fight and telling the stories we care about. We are tremendously grateful to the dozens of contributors—writers, photographers, illustrators, designers—who helped us make this magazine. To our hosts and guides and travelers and Anti-ICE Supper Club comrades who have become an integral part of Roads & Kingdoms. And to our readers, who have been there through all of it and who are our reason to keep going.
But enough about all that. It’s time to get to work on Issue 2, coming this fall.
