Wall Street Journal features Humboldt after a pitch from Eureka-Humboldt Visitors Bureau

When one of the nation’s busiest big city newspapers needed a California break, the Eureka-Humboldt Visitors Bureau stepped in as its guide. The payoff? Coverage in the Wall Street Journal’s travel section this week, starring many Humboldt County attractions and businesses, worth an estimated $200,000 in media placement value.



The Humboldt redwoods, naturally, dominate the Wall Street Journal feature, a three-day road trip from San Francisco to Eureka. The piece leads with an image of the super trees on the Avenue of the Giants, then pays homage to Travels With Charley,” in which John Steinbeck famously enthused about the “ambassadors from another time.”

The bureau worked since the summer with the Journal staff to develop the coverage, including early trip planning, frequent wildfire reports to help better position the timing of publication, and fact checking.

“This story follows the classic Bureau playbook. The redwoods lure people in, but more discoveries surprise and amaze,” said Richard Stenger, associate director of media and marketing for the bureau.

To wit, the bureau steered the Journal to some of Humboldt’s finest draws, some old, like the iconic Benbow Inn and the mysterious Carson Mansion, which “is usually closed to the public, but you can still skulk around the property snapping photos like a cat burglar,” reporter Ryan Haase wrote.

And some new, like the Humboldt Bay Social Club and Humboldt Bay Provisions, “part of a growing wave of stylish businesses, which serves oysters pulled in right from the bay,” continued the main article, posted online Friday and slated for print publication Saturday.

Haase could not resist the call of the wild farther north, dashing up to Redwood National & State Park, then hiking the James Irvine Trail to marvel at Fern Canyon with its “lush, furry walls so otherworldly they’re in a Jurassic Park film.”

Given the amazing Humboldt experience, the peak of the trip, the Journal seemed little enthused about returning on the road through Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin. Better to take an “80-minute hop from the Humboldt County airport, [which] delivers a birds-eye view of all the terrain you just saw at street level.”

The bureau has little interest in taking a laurel break. Days before this story posted, Stenger gripped and grinned with some of Northern California’s finest travel writers at an evening hosted by San Francisco Travel, a longtime bureau partner, where he ran into an old bureau friend, travel writer Bob Cooper, who freelances for major media outlets, including the Journal.

“I started lobbying him with a whole different pitch that I think could land Humboldt on the Journal’s front page,” Stenger enthused.