SouthernTravelNews.com™ & SouthernCruising.com™ Celebrate Third Birthday, Add  New Editorial Features

Riverview, FL -- SouthernTravelNews.com™ and SouthernCruising.com™, two robust online travel newspapers covering the U.S. South and cruising from southern U.S. ports, are celebrating their third birthdays in 2010.

Owned by Susan J. Young, a veteran trade and consumer travel journalist, both publications are launching new editorial features and coverage areas to enhance service to readers, effective on or before February 1, 2010:

**New Senior Cruise/Travel Editor: Marcia Levin, a highly trusted name in travel/cruise journalism and former president of the Society of American Travel Writers, will become the new senior contributing editor-senior travel & cruises for SouthernTravelNews.com™ and SouthernCruising.com™. She'll contribute original feature articles on senior travel topics as well as regular updates on deals, discounts and program perks for those 55 and older. Added by Feb. 1, a new section of both sites will be dedicated to her senior travel coverage.

**New Family Cruise Editor: Effective immediately, Lizz Dinnigan is the new senior contributing editor-family cruising for SouthernCruising.com™. By Jan. 15, her dedicated Family Cruising section will be fully operational with new features and content. Dinnigan will update cruise enthusiasts about family cruise deals, discounts and children's cruise programs. Married and the mother of 3- and 6-year-old children, Dinnigan has created first-hand reviews of cruise line children's programs for SouthernCruising.com™ over the past several years. An experienced journalist and copy editor, she was formerly an associate cruise editor at NY-based Travel Agent magazine.

**New Content Sharing Agreement: SouthernCruising.com has inked a content sharing agreement with internationally known AvidCruiser.com. Select stories written by SouthernCruising.com’s™ Editor Susan J. Young and AvidCruiser.com’s™ Editor Ralph Grizzle will appear on both sites from time to time. Both editors are now senior contributing editors on each other’s sites. "While both sites will continue to create the bulk of our content separately based on the diversity of our readership, we also see great value in partnerships which expand our reach in the marketplace and create more extensive content for readers,” said Young.

**Expanded Coverage: Effective Jan. 15, SouthernCruising.com™ will expand its U.S. cruise port coverage to include the Port of Baltimore. That port is south of the Mason-Dixon Line and increasingly popular with southern U.S. travelers sailing to the Caribbean and Bermuda. SouthernCruising.com™ recently sailed from Baltimore on Carnival Pride; a first-hand profile of the port and a Top Story review of that weeklong cruise will be published on Jan. 11.

Starting Feb. 1, SouthernTravelNews.com™ also will expand its coverage to include southern MO and, specifically, Branson, MO. “We believe that adding Branson, a popular tourism destination just north of the Arkansas border, is a logical extension of our southern publication’s geographic reach,” said Young. “Branson activity coverage has been requested by some readers and the destination is certainly popular with southern state travelers.”

**New “On the Road in the South” Blog: As a result of a six-week editorial research trip through Georgia, eastern Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina in late 2009, SouthernTravelNews.com™ will launch a first-hand "Southern Exploration Blog" on Thursday, Jan. 7. Chronological in nature, the first-hand blog will change two to three times weekly through spring – taking readers on the road trip as it unfolded. It will offer first-hand travel tidbits and destination knowledge often not found in other travel blogs or articles.

In addition, major Top Story magazine-style features on the site will complement the Blog coverage. The latest major feature from that trip was added on Jan. 5, 2010; it’s entitled, “Americana in Action: Fayetteville, NC.” SouthernTravelNews.com™ plans another extensive road trip to other southern states and regions of the South later this year

**New Twitter Presence: Editor Susan J. Young now “tweets” on travel and cruise topics. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/travlsusan.