About our bloggers

Susan Derby, a freelance writer whose work frequently appears in the Daily Travel & Deal blog, covers a range of topics as a writer, but it’s travel that really gets her talking. Formerly a writer/editor for Lonely Planet’s website, she has co-authored several Lonely Planet guidebooks, covering destinations from the Rocky Mountains to India. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, SF Weekly and Continental Airlines Magazine. She has also worked with the travel social-networking site VirtualTourist.com as its public relations and communications director.

Jane Engle is a consumer reporter and assistant travel editor at the Los Angeles Times. For more than a decade she has dispensed tips, explored destinations and tracked deals, news and trends that affect travelers. Jane’s latest travels took her to South Africa, where she toured Cape Town and the Western Cape and went on safari outside Johannesburg. Closer to home, you’ll find her hiking, bicycling, boogie-boarding, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

Chris Erskine has been a deputy Travel editor since 2007, responsible for helping to assign and edit stories. He also contributes stories, blog posts and photos to the section. His columns, “Man of the House” and “Fan of the House,” appear in the paper’s Home and Sports sections.

Catharine Hamm has been part of the Los Angeles Times Travel section since 1999, serving as travel editor since 2003. She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., but counts Virginia, Hawaii, the Philippines, Kansas and, of course, California as among the 34 places she has called home.

Jen Leo is a leading authority in the online travel world. Founded in 2002, her former blog, WrittenRoad.com, was noted in Frommer’s “Editor’s Choice: Our Favorite Travel Blogs” and was named one of Writer’s Digest’s “101 Best Websites for Writers.” She’s also blogged for the BootsnAll Travel Network, HotelChatter.com, Weblogs Inc. and Six Apart. Better known as the award-winning editor of the popular five-book humor series that started with “Sand In My Bra (Travelers’ Tales),” Jen encourages others to hit the road as often as they can. If she could be anywhere it’d be bodysurfing in Australia, eating shrimp tacos in Baja or checking out a new hotel in Las Vegas. She loves finding vacation getaways, and if Jen can’t hit the road herself, she’s quick to point others in the right direction. You can find Jen mentioned on popular travel blogs and websites like Gadling, Gridskipper, Rick Steves, Mobissimo, GoNOMAD, Transitions Abroad, World Hum and Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding.

Brady MacDonald got his annual passport to Disneyland a decade ago when he was covering Anaheim as a beat reporter. As a graphics reporter, he visited California Adventure a dozen times in advance of the second park’s debut. And now, as a deputy Web editor, he’s been enlisted to blog about his interests in Disneyland and theme parks. Brady explains: “I’m neither an expert nor a critic, but rather a fun-obsessed fan with a point of view and a father of a mouse-addicted daughter. Mostly I keep going back to Disneyland because of my fascination with Walt’s limitless imagination and daring to dream big. “In the course of my reporting, I plan to cover news, trends, issues and changes at Disneyland and the major Southern California amusement parks that would be of interest to the casual vacationer as well as the diehard fan.”

Mark Milian is a Los Angeles Times staffer reporting to the Technology and Top of the Ticket blogs. As a member of the 2008 summer internship program, he helped coordinate online social media for the Times website. Before that the New Jersey resident wrote for local newspapers and various blogs. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in online journalism from the University of Maryland in 2009. 

Staff writer Christopher Reynolds joined the Los Angeles Times in 1990 after attending college in Fresno and working several years for the San Diego Union. He has spent 10 of the last 15 years writing for the Travel section and covers mostly travel in the American West and Mexico.

Susan Spano has been writing columns, cover stories and blogging about travel for the Los Angeles Times since 1997. She spent five months in 2007 studying Mandarin in Beijing and lived in Paris for three years before that. Now she lives in Rome, eats pasta daily and files reports chiefly about travel in Europe.

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 2:50 pm by admin and is filed under Las Vegas, San Diego. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.