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National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers
- suzzer99 3y agoThe future sucks.
- jay3ss 3y agoThe present kind of does as well
- kfarr 3y agoJust wait until you hear about the past!
- tabtab 3y agoBut I learn about the past from National Geographic.
- tough 3y agoThen, did you really learn about the past?
- whartung 3y ago“One word: Dentistry” — P. J. O'Rourke (I think)
- irrational 3y agoI hear the Assyrians were super duper nice to those they conquered.
- morkalork 3y agoThis statement sums up the thesis of nearly every article they've published in the last few years before I cancelled my subscription. Every issue left me depressed.
- avgcorrection 3y agoWas it like how all nature documentaries now have to conclude with a section on climate change?
- morkalork 3y agoPretty much. It's not like I'm gonna fly out to Africa and start hunting poachers though.
- defrost 3y agoOf course not, they already have women and girls for that: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180926-akashinga-all-women-rangers-in-africa-fighting-poaching https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180926-akashinga-all-wo...
- hindsightbias 3y agoThe past is whatever wiki says it is and as long as it is hyperlinkable.
- clcaev 3y agoNational Geographic is no longer licensing images, art, text or video to third parties. If you are interested in using content seen in a National Geographic product for your project, please contact the original content creator about possible usage permissions. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/helpcenter?path=s/article/where-can-i-get-permission-to-use-an-article-photograph-or-map-from-one-of-your-magazines-books-or-websites# https://www.nationalgeographic.com/helpcenter?path=s/article...
- prawn 3y agoThey contacted me recently about licensing one of my photos, but the amount offered was pretty weak and not worth the invoicing and transactional emails.
- cobaltoxide 3y agoRIP Nat Geo ?
- MattGaiser 3y agoSeem to just be moving to freelancers.
- whimsicalism 3y agoit has always been mostly freelancers
- gramie 3y agoOne of the greatest deals I ever got (in my mind) was buying the entire set of National Geographic magazines on DVD disc for about $15. More than 100 years of articles! Too bad that they have gone the way of the dodo, but the writing has been on the wall for many years.
- Blahah 3y ago1888-2020 is a torrent that will never die. Not to be trite, your $15 made effectively no difference to the longevity of the corporation while torrenting it made absolutely all the difference to the longevity of the content. I have for free what you got for $15. The person who made it a torrent is a hero. If the dodo genome had been torrented it would be alive today.
- swyx 3y ago> the writing has been on the wall too soon man, too soon
- kiwijamo 3y agoToo soon? Is there a context to this I'm missing?
- irrational 3y agoWriters were laid off… writing on the wall…?
- gramie 3y agoI was speaking in terms of almost every kind of print journalism struggling and, usually failing to adapt their business model. It has been going on for a couple of decades now.
- blinkingled 3y agoIs it possible to backup and use the DVD content from local disk? Haven't had the best of luck with DVDs and buying one of eBay makes me feel even less optimistic the DVDs will last long.
- Zaheer 3y ago>Among those who lost their jobs in the latest layoff was Debra Adams Simmons, who only last September was promoted to vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at National Geographic Media Why did they need a VP of DEI for such a small workforce (that they've now laid off entirely)? Seems like some poor decision making internally.
- rideontime 3y agoNational Geographic Media is more than the magazine.
- blairbeckwith 3y agoTurns out they didn't.
- whimsicalism 3y agoThey have a larger workforce than just staff writers lol
- mr_toad 3y agoA vice president in a US company can be anything from 2nd in command down to a low level manager with no real authority.
- ilyt 3y agoTo check a box
- woodruffw 3y agoNational Geographic has somewhere between 1400 and 1500 total employees, from a quick look online. The magazine is just one tiny sliver (unfortunately) of their media presence.
- hedora 3y agoSo, they have 1500 people managing zero content producers now? Zero COGS == infinite margins! I’m sure they’ll figure out how to build a sustainable business put of that. /s
- echelon 3y agoI feel as if the problem in media, film, and television today was brought about by the anticompetitive behaviors of tech giants encroaching into media. Amazon and Apple offer nearly free entertainment that they subsidize at a loss. Vertical media companies are trying to compete and are thus attempting to mimic the streaming model. This is an unwinnable battle. Disney and NatGeo can't compete on price. HBO / Warner / Discovery can't either. They're being forced to awkwardly consolidate and cut costs to stem their losses while they try to serve the same customers. Streaming is ultimately a game of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. You can't charge a big premium for sludge content, especially now that it's a commodity. Summers full of prestige drama and blockbusters have been replaced by shovelware Bird Box sequels and shows that get launched and canceled in one season. It's disappointing.
- rkagerer 3y agoI feel like there's an opportunity for a competitor that streams only a (comparatively) small number of curated, highly-rated shows and movies. At least, I would buy that. So tired of the same old formulaic Netflix slosh.
- echelon 3y agoA24 has found a great deal of success in curating their films. It's the magic touch that Disney seems to have lost.
- BoxFour 3y agoYou’ve just described HBO.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhat used to be HBO. All those old bosses are gone and now reality show executives are in charge.
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- Reason077 3y agoIt's a bit sad what's become of National Geographic under Disney. Once it was actually a part of the prestigious National Geographic Society, a non-profit. Now what's left of nationalgeographic.com is mostly a giant advertisement for Disney+. They even have Buzz Lightyear and Star Wars characters on there...
- Nick87633 3y agoMaybe you got a different A/B version of the page, but I went there and there weren't any of those. There's a Disney+ call to action but it shows naturalistic content. I cycled through the promoted shows gallery and it didn't bring up any Star wars or Toy story items.
- dylan604 3y agowere ad blockers involved? i run uBO, and i too do not see the Disney themed ads.
- whimsicalism 3y agoon mobile with no blockers and i don’t see it. fwiw i think the deterioration has been much more clear under natgeo tv than the magazine
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoOr maybe Disney knows they have children.
- Reason077 3y agoMaybe the US page is different from international versions? I'm viewing it from the UK.
- richeyryan 3y agoI'm viewing it from Ireland, and half way down the page, I see a full-screen banner for Disney+ with a notable personality from each of their franchises Moana (Disney), Mr Incredible (Pixar), Thor (Marvel), Jyn Erso (Rogue One/Star Wars) and Jeff Goldblum (National Geographic). I suppose that's what you're seeing?
- TheRealPomax 3y agoRupert Murdoch is a great way to kill your brand.
- starik36 3y agoYou didn't read the article, did you?
- jandrese 3y agoThe part about their TV offerings being run by Fox and running their name into the ground?
- TheRealPomax 3y agoYou didn't remember that Disney bought Fox years after Murdoch -through Fox- bought National Geographic Media and started running it into the ground, did you?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoRupert Murdoch has nothing to do with Disney.
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- TheRealPomax 3y agoNo, but he had quite a lot to do with killing off National Geographic as a reputable publication. While I realise 2015-2017 is basically a century ago thanks to Covid, it's not so long ago that we collectively forgot that Murdoch bought National Geographic and immediately started running it into the ground, is it? Did we already forget that there was a time before Disney owned Fox?
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- donatj 3y ago> At the end of 2022, it had just under 1.8 million subscribers 1,800,000 * $20 => $36,000,000 I don't know what I'm missing and what the overheads are but that seems like it should be able to support a fair number of writers easily? Even so $20 per year seems impractically low. I pay ten times that for my Economist subscription. I really imagine they could strike a middle ground without losing too many subscribers.
- whimsicalism 3y agoI mean they’ll continue to publish the magazine and they have long relied heavily on freelance writers.
- blagie 3y agoI imagine you breathe very rarefied air. $20 is a lot for most families, outside of Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and a few other areas. Economist has rich subscribers. I don't think NatGeo would be anywhere close to 1.8M with higher prices. Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos.
- donatj 3y agoThis is just silly. I live in the Midwest. Even when I was living paycheck to paycheck in rural Minnesota, $20 per year was never a lot of money. > Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos. For the $200 per year I pay for The Economist I could maybe get to Chicago if I got a really good deal.
- zactato 3y ago20 is a lot for some people, but it’s like 5/6 beers most places. Sure in the poorest parts of the country this could make or break, but the list of places where people could afford it is much longer than SV, Boston, NYC. What about suburban DC? Dallas? Houston? Denver? Salt Lake City? Chicago? Not sure if your last sentence was intended to be ironic, but there’s nowhere you can fly that’s less than an Economist subscription
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- falcolas 3y ago“… realigning key departments to help deepen engagement with our readers…” And nothing deepens engagement with readers like eliminating your full time writers. Who doesn’t simply adore getting a different voice for every regurgitated AP news article?
- Seattle3503 3y agoI read that line a few times and still don't know what it means.
- jmbwell 3y ago> In an email to The Post on Wednesday, National Geographic spokesperson Chris Albert said staffing changes will not affect the company’s plans to continue publishing a monthly magazine “but rather give us more flexibility to tell different stories and meet our audiences where they are across our many platforms.” Meet audiences where they are on platforms, with different stories… presumably different from what it’s known for? Sounds a lot like flushing the remainder of the brand down the same mass-market toilet as everything else, or wanting to dump the whole “property” but not wanting to give up on the last dying gasping pennies of revenue.
- pnt12 3y agoIt's just PR speak for "yeah we fired everyone to cut costs but pinky swear the quality won't be affected please keep buying". Which other business fired their employees and outsourced their work to become better? Approximately, or even absolutely, none.
- ftxbro 3y agoNext natgeo magazine issue made from midjourney 5 and gpt. Cover features the Afghan Girl doing the Youtube Thumbnail Face and involving Disney franchise IP somehow.
- lotsoweiners 3y agoDammit now I’m going to have to open up Photoshop just to see what that would look like.
- Barrin92 3y ago"At its peak in the late 1980s, National Geographic reached 12 million subscribers in the United States, and millions more overseas. Many of its devotees so savored its illumination of other worlds — space, the depths of the ocean, little-seen parts of the planet — that they stacked old issues into piles that cluttered attics and basements.[...] The magazine was eventually surpassed for profits and attention by the society’s video operations, including its flagship National Geographic cable channel and Nat Geo Wild, a channel focused on animals. While they produced documentaries equal in quality to the magazine’s rigorous reporting, the channels — managed by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox — also aired pseudoscientific entertainment programming about UFOs and reality series like “Sharks vs. Tunas” at odds with the society’s original high-minded vision." What a trajectory for our civilization. Reminds me of the tidbit that Astronaut used to be the most named profession teens aspired to in the 70s and 80s. Now it's influencers. And don't call me old or jaded, I'm barely 30, I already grew up with ancient aliens on the 'history' channel.
- musicale 3y agoHigh-minded doesn't sell. TLC was originally "The Learning Channel."
- dredmorbius 3y agoIf you want another story of a regrettable decline, look up the story of H.L. Mencken's American Mercury magazine. That which starts well ends badly. That which starts badly ends worse.
- javiramos 3y agoReposting this link — vintage National Geographic pictures: https://vintagenatgeographic.tumblr.com/ https://vintagenatgeographic.tumblr.com/
- irrational 3y ago> pieced together by editors Well, that sounds like a disaster. It’s like asking the project manager to create a program by piecing together some code. I remember getting a spam call back in the 90s. They were trying to sell magazine subscriptions. I wasn’t interested, but when asked what magazine I liked the best I responded with National Geographic. The person on the line had never heard of it. I was honestly surprised that someone had never heard of it. They said they would ask a manager if they offered that magazine and I did wait since I was curious. They did not.
- crazygringo 3y agoI'm not sure this is necessarily such a bad thing? The kinds of articles NatGeo writes are so spread across the world and really benefit from a diverse set of authors including local/regional/expert ones. It seems to me that 100 articles on 100 different topics across the globe might be much better written by 100 different freelance authors rather than the same 19. Regular news publications generally benefit from staff writers who have many years of experience on a particular beat. But NatGeo feels like it's on the opposite end of the spectrum, where all-freelance makes a lot of sense. It means many more voices rather than fewer.
- magicalist 3y agoIt's the giggification of everything possible. Pay as little per story as possible (incentivizing the author to spend as little time as they can on it) and hope second jobs or social safety nets make up for the lack of a living the authors now make.
- jeegsy 3y ago> It seems to me that 100 articles on 100 different topics across the globe might be much better written by 100 different freelance authors rather than the same 19. You would think that but that hasn't really happened. The magazine had a point of view and editorial standpoint that people appreciated. What you are suggesting is basically what we get from digital outlets today.
- pnt12 3y agoIt sounds good in theory, but this usually results in picking the cheapest freelancers. A magazine which fires all its writers is not looking for quality, it's looking to cut costs.
- khazhoux 3y agoIt's hypocritical for people here to dismay about the fall of print journalism and long-form writing, when every article from a paid source is followed by a https://archive.is/xyz https://archive.is/xyz link.
- triyambakam 3y agoI'm not convinced. I would gladly pay per article but I don't want a subscription. I noticed this on Canva. I wanted to use a non-free resource there and I was able to just buy it without subscribing. How awesome.
- jrumbut 3y agoThe incentives of paying per article aren't great though. Instead of one article covering a school board meeting it gets split into one article per speaking, an article in cover why the meeting happened, an article on when they'll meet next, one interviewing the attendees, etc. It's a tricky problem.
- throwawaylinux 3y agoA farmer could also sell their apples cut in progressively smaller pieces. Produce worse articles, get less money and customers for them.
- jrumbut 3y agoThe thing about that, is that a lot of farmers own their farms. It takes many years to create a new orchard and there's only so much land suitable for the purpose. New content vendors can spring up over night, even ones doing real news or expensive trips or whatever National Geographic (or any other outlet) is into these days. And now these writers don't even have the miniscule security of at-will employment. They are going to respond readily to incentives because there is nothing tethering them to a way of doing business. They have no anchor so they will sail any way the wind blows. When you have the security of actually owning land and equipment or having an employment contract you can sit back and think about stuff like professionalism and integrity. As it is, fewer writers are in the position to turn down demands that they churn out crappy little dopamine hits as fast as possible.
- keepamovin 3y agoMy maternal grandma had shelves full of National Geographic magazines going back to 1923 (or further). The photos and drawings were good but the stories were great. Endless adventure and tales about the world. I remember spending happy hours reading them on holidays to Queensland as a kid in the early 90s. A way to escape tiny world and join a bigger one, at your own pace, before the internet. Too bad my dumbass parents chucked them all away without a thought to who might want them nor asking…
- justinclift 3y agoHmmmm, I wonder when those are out of copyright and eligible for being scanned + added to something like Gutenberg?
- silcoon 3y agoMaybe? But I don't think many of us would go and read them anyway
- ghaff 3y agoMost of them at least were released on DVD though the version I got for cheap at a library book sale would require doing some magic with an old version of Windows and I haven't bothered. But there may be a newer version. But yeah, like the early days of CD-ROMs it's sort of one of those things you think would be great to own and you don't really do much with it.
- coldtea 3y agoIt's not for the "many".
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoThe issues published before 1928 are out of copyright for sure. 1928 and afterwards, if it was renewed then copyright lasts until 95 years after first publication, which means those volumes will be entering public domain one year at a time.
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- pc2g4d 3y agoToo bad corporate operations are so smooshifyingly bland, robbing properties of their soul. Profit is nice, even vital, but a bad thing to maximize at the expense of all else. Or maybe it was the colonialist taint that just doesn't sit right these days? But... the world is still vast, and worth exploring. Maybe even moreso now we _think_ we know everything via Twitter etc. International Geographic, anyone?
- rs999gti 3y ago> Profit is nice, even vital Of course, no business will run at a loss, unless it is the WBNA, which is kept alive by the NBA https://medium.com/@yannickondoa/behind-the-figures-1-why-wnba-players-are-not-paid-as-much-as-nba-players-51c1574a6d7#:~:text=In%202003%2C%20former%20NBA%20commissioner,WNBA%20struggles%20at%20the%20moment https://medium.com/@yannickondoa/behind-the-figures-1-why-wn....
- ftxbro 3y ago[flagged]
- Zelphyr 3y agoI have such fond memories of going to my grandparents house and looking at the rows of yellow magazines sitting on their bookshelf. My favorite was an issue about the Loch Ness Monster.
- egberts1 3y agoAvoid the new but dry Disney+ National Geographic sans its staff writer. Instead, enjoy the vintage National Geographic with all the splendor of excellent travel writers. https://vintagenatgeographic.tumblr.com/ https://vintagenatgeographic.tumblr.com/
- INGSOCIALITE 3y agoNational Geographic was an amazing publication when cultures were distant, travel was not as easy, areas of the world were still 'remote', and there was no internet. Where else could you see photographs of tribes in New Guinea, or an expedition to the North Pole, or elusive savannah animals? Once everything was 'discovered' and conglomerated into wikipedia and YouTube, there was no content left for National Geographic. They started writing articles about science news, no different than Popular Science magazine. Then the political era started, and every issue was polarizingly politicized. I have had a subscription for decades, and I can honestly say I stopped even opening the magazine years ago. The kids just cut pictures out of it for art projects.
- paul_funyun 3y agoI and a lot of other people would pay good money for a bespoke magazine though. A platform where reputable writers, authors, journalists of various stripes promise a monthly article that's print only. The company would bind together the articles of the authors you subscribe to in a nice format, with some staff photogs and writers adding in their own articles, what have you. I'd order three, one full of editorials, one with science writers, and one with scifi/fantasy short stories, serials, and the like. To really individualize it, shovel all the reader's choices into an AI art generator and put the output on the cover. I'd pay $30 ($50 if the quality of the paper and binding was good) an issue to get 4 of these a year, and I think you could make it for that much.
- tehjoker 3y agoman, it sort of seems like mass media should be publicly funded instead of controlled by rich people trying to make a buck. these guys (the media in general, not specifically Nat Geo) put out government propaganda anyway and hire government officials, I might as well get it high quality free at point of service via tax dollars.
- wood_spirit 3y agoI’m one of many people with cherished long shelves of old copies of the magazine who stopped subscribing when the charity sold it to Disney. It’s sad, I think as long as its sale was funding the fieldwork people were happy to pay. But make it into a normal for profit magazine and it’s just another crass commercial effort without heart. And people voted with their wallets.
- danw1979 3y agoI distinctly remember opening the fold out of an issue (April 1997) and staring for what must have been hours at the Hubble deep field image, just trying to comprehend what I was seeing. I’d never seen the image on the Internet at that point. I guess it might have been published there, but viewing it in high resolution print would have been way more impressive than an SVGA CRT or whatever I was using then.
- hadlock 3y agoThis is one of the few headlines here that truly makes me sad. In the 80s, National Geographic was the color commentary to the bland dryness of WORLDBOOK encyclopedias in the school library.
- bmitc 3y agoIt is really sad that actual journalism has no place in today's world because the Internet has made everyone want everything for free. So everyone ends up getting "free" information and articles that consist of drivel and superficial research all the while paying for it via their data being collected and sold. The Internet and capitalism don't make a good cocktail. Then I see this: > The cutback — the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co. It's sad that National Geographic is effectively closing its doors when it's owned by Walt Disney Co., which has yearly revenue of nearly $100 billion. They seriously can't find the miniscule amount of cash in there to support National Geographic's journalism? Walt Disney is one of the most evil and exploitative companies ever, so I suppose I'm not surprised by their actions here. > National Geographic spokesperson Chris Albert said staffing changes will not affect the company’s plans to continue publishing a monthly magazine If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine?
- ourlordcaffeine 3y ago>If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine? Well there is always chatGPT
- elektrontamer 3y agoThat's what I really fear about LLMs, good content is going to get drowned out by endless bot drivel.
- intothemild 3y agoI think this wont be sustainable, like, how long til until people stop reading LLM generated content?
- jvm___ 3y agoI keep re-reading and referencing this article as it lays out how the human vs AI internet landscape is likely to shake out. https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
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- NoNameHaveI 3y agoI, for one, worry about what will happen to the once prestigious PBS in the streaming age. Yes, there are half-hearted efforts to present shows, but I have never seen a promotion. Thankfully, the quality of the content tends to remain high. Yes, I am a subscriber. We subscribe to A LOT of streaming services. I probably watch 2-3 hours of video content a day. But, probably the most edifying, enriching content I watch comes from PBS.
- stevenwliao 3y agoWhat do you subscribe to on PBS? Didn't even know they had a subscription program.
- nologic01 3y agoShifting risk to where it is least understood and priced is what modern corporate management is all about. Creating true value is hard work, what people used to do in the old days when the future was still a shiny something and progress was not discredited. From eliminating defined-benefit from employee pensions schemes to "not having" any employees at all, that is the name the game. Instead of fixed contracts where the entity carries the risk of reduced revenue, just take advantage of a willing pool of competing freelancers that race to the bottom and are at the mercy of economic cycles and their very own lifecyle. People often rail about generic "capitalism" but this is an example of the countless levers available to tune the beast so that its less of a vampire: What type of labor contracts firms can legally engage-in is a simple political / regulatory choice.
- Eumenes 3y agoHas anyone "read" national geographic in the past 20 years? My understanding is "smart" people put it on their coffee table when guests come over, like the new yorker
- abdusco 3y agoReminds of the plot of the film The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty[0], where the Life magazine was transitioning to digital-only releases. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitt...
- iancmceachern 3y agoWell, that's the end of that.
- grever 3y ago[dead]