Who needs Lonely Planet? We got JimmyDR...

[eldorob]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080414/od_nm/plagiarism_dc;_ylt=AmkTjMFkXmFOIttEsaJ.SLUuQE4F

Travel writer says he made up parts of books
Mon Apr 14, 12:37 PM ET


MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An author for the Lonely Planet travel guidebook series has claimed that he plagiarized and made up large sections of his books, an Australian newspaper reported on Sunday.

Author Thomas Kohnstamm told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including their titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile.
The Lonely Planet guidebooks sell more than six million copies a year.
The Sunday Telegraph said Kohnstamm also claims in his new book "Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?" that he accepted free travel, contravening company policy.
He said in one case he had not even visited the country he wrote about.
"They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern at the Colombian consulate," the newspaper quoted Kohnstamm as saying.
Lonely Planet said it had reviewed Kohnstamm's guidebooks but had not found any inaccuracies in them, the Sunday Telegraph said.
(Reporting by Victoria Thieberger; Editing by Jerry Norton)

[Kevy]

This was the only travel book I could find of Colombia a year and a half ago. they list him as writing about food and culture, History, Environment, not really writing anything specific about an area. The book gives you an idea about each city, not that helpful.:mad:

[Ingus_Khan]

here are some interesting ideas to research given the current dollar situation.

http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-22776375;_ylc=X3oDMTIybXN2aWVsBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMjcxOTQ4MQRzZWMDZnAtdG9kYXltb2QEc2xrA3N0cm9uZ2RvbGxhciAtMjAwOC0wNC0xNQ--

[Berzin]

What a fucking cocksucker!!!!!!!

I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Colombia and the information is shitty at best.

Nothing that a real traveler would need, like accommodations in different cities.

Gee, he says they couldn't pay him enough to go to Colombia but the chickenshit had no qualms about taking money for writing shit that wasn't true.

The info on Colombia in this book is spotty at best-Lonely Planet should be ashamed of themselves for defending whatever was written by this man in their books.

But because they will want to issue refunds to anyone, they'll stick to their story that the information written in them is good.