Like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geographic magazine has been on a relentlessly downward path, struggling for vibrancy in an increasingly unforgiving ecosystem.
2023-06-2823:01393389www.washingtonpost.com
National Geographic is laying off its staff writers, the latest cut in a challenging environment for magazine publishing.
The cutback — the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co. — involves some 19 editorial staffers in all, who were notified in April that these terminations were coming. Article assignments will henceforth be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors. The cuts also eliminated the magazine’s small audio department.
The layoffs were the second over the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015. In September, Disney removed six top editors in an extraordinary reorganization of the magazine’s editorial operations.
Departing staffers said Wednesday the magazine has curtailed photo contracts that enabled photographers to spend months in the field producing the publication’s iconic images.
In a further cost-cutting move, copies of the famous bright-yellow-bordered print publication will no longer be sold on newsstands in the United States starting next year, the company said in an internal announcement last month.
National Geographic writer Craig Welch noted the moment in a tweet on Wednesday: “My new National Geographic just arrived, which includes my latest feature — my 16th, and my last as a senior writer. … I’ve been so lucky. I got to work w/incredible journalists and tell important, global stories. It’s been an honor.”
The magazine’s current trajectory has been years in the making, set in motion primarily by the epochal decline of print and ascent of digital news and information. In the light-speed world of digital media, National Geographic has remained an almost artisanal product — a monthly magazine whose photos, graphics and articles were sometimes the result of months of research and reporting.
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.
It remains among the most widely read magazines in America, at a time when magazines are no longer widely read. At the end of 2022, it had just under 1.8 million subscribers, according to the authoritative Alliance for Audited Media.
National Geographic was launched by Washington’s National Geographic Society, a foundation formed by 33 academics, scientists and would-be adventurers, including Alexander Graham Bell. The magazine was initially sold to the public as a perk for joining the society. It grew into a stand-alone publication slowly but steadily, reaching 1 million subscribers by the 1930s.
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.
The magazine’s place of honor continued to dim through a series of corporate reshufflings that began in 2015 when the Society agreed to form a for-profit partnership with 21st Century Fox, which took majority control in exchange for $725 million. The partnership came under the Disney banner in 2019 as part of a massive $71 billion deal between Fox and Disney.
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, the entity that oversees the magazine and website.
At the time, David Miller, executive vice president of National Geographic Media, said the magazine was “realigning key departments to help deepen engagement with our readers while also nurturing existing business models and developing new lines of revenue.”
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.”
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Comments
It 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?
>If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine?
Random freelancers on the cheap, with no/less content that needs serious preparation and months/year-long support to create.
By madsbuch 2023-06-2911:22 People who have the subject matter as profession and not writing about the subject matter?
I would love to freelance write for a software magazine while being a professional software engineer.
By ourlordcaffeine 2023-06-298:201 reply >If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine?
Well there is always chatGPT
By elektrontamer 2023-06-298:414 reply That's what I really fear about LLMs, good content is going to get drowned out by endless bot drivel.
> That's what I really fear about LLMs, good content is going to get drowned out by endless bot drivel.
I anticipate the opposite.
Already AI content is better than crappy human writers.
In the medium term AI content is going to be better than most human writers (it arguably already is in some limited cases).
In the long term it may compete with the best human writers.
Some humans are too full of themselves, thinking they're so exceptional, while computers are proving time and again that's not so. The evidence is starting us in the face.
The AI produced content I've seen writes like a competent 5th grader. National Geographic wasn't being written by competent 5th graders.
I do think people are going to get tired of AI-produced this and AI-produced that - they're going to crave content created by humans. At least for some things. There may be a place for AI-created content that we love. That is this whole thing might be a false dilemma, it's not AI or human created content, it's AI and human created content. We'll find out which is better at what.
By berniedurfee 2023-06-2922:32 I imagine, after some decades living neck deep in a cesspool of AI generated content, there will be a renaissance of sorts where human produced content will suddenly break through the noise to resonate with some innately human trait that AI can’t figure out.
> The AI produced content I've seen writes like a competent 5th grader. National Geographic wasn't being written by competent 5th graders.
Well, over half of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level[1], so it seems like AI content is satisfactory, given the median reading skills.
By wasimanitoba 2023-06-307:33 National Geographic's audience might not tend toward the lowest denominator.
There's a good chance that people who read that magazine have a higher average reading level.
That's not a positive point for llms. That's just a horrific indictment on how badly the US education has failed.
Past tense. It has failed. It's not failing.
By nitpicker9 2023-06-2916:061 reply Present Perfect:/
By Incipient 2023-07-019:27 Haha very true. Nicely done =P
By thesnide 2023-06-3019:04 I imaging that in a not-so-distant future we'll have some "Genuine Human Generated Certification"
It has happened the same way in every areas where you have rampant counterfeit or simply cheaper competition.
As even if LLM can generate greate quality content, it will always be even cheaper to mass produce low quality. And once you cross the Rubicon of not being certified, it is just a matter of time that capitalism/greed will make it a race to the bottom.
AI content today is better than the worst human writers, but only because the worst human writers are so terrible. (Think of you trying to write an essay in a language that you’ve only studied for 3 months bad.)
That doesn’t mean that LLMs are on a course to inevitably surpass the 90th percentile human writer (which is what most full-time writers presumably are). I may be a Luddite here, but I don’t expect that in my young kids’ lifetime.
By Guthur 2023-06-2911:42 In my opinion LLM will never be able to replicate the human experience as it's solely based on language which in itself is only a poor facsimile of consciousness.
If writing is our best attempt to share our personal psychic experience then all LLM can be is fragments of those experiences and can not in itself experience the presence of being that is human.
By versteegen 2023-06-2911:44 (I'll note you wrote "AI content" not "LLMs", before anyone gets the wrong idea.)
> Some humans are too full of themselves, thinking they're so exceptional, while computers are proving time and again that's not so. The evidence is starting us in the face.
Thanks for daring to state this unpopular opinion. I completely agree that humans have a very poor (and hence inflated) idea of what they are good at, because they have only had animals and (recently) machines to compare themselves to, plus these opinions formed long ago are a very firmly held cultural memory (e.g. literary and movie tropes, religion). Creativity being IMO one of the most badly misclaimed abilities.
By ForOldHack 2023-06-3016:31 You are using an AI to write this? Or do a vast majority of actual humans rely on crappy writing? You do make a good point. I'll shove my next few wikipedia edits down an AIs gullet...
*This was written with an AI, and I told it to be spicy, salty and smarmy.
By russian-troll 2023-06-3022:54 >In the long term it may compete with the best human writers. AIs lack connection with real world. This is important if we speak about NatGeo. >The evidence is starting us in the face. AIs generate average texts. It is admittedly cool. But I think it just shows how much human drivel is out there. Funny thing is that people optimized texts for search engines in attempts to hack ranking black boxes. Hence ML AI was the reason for bullshit for quite some time long before LLMs.
By mensetmanusman 2023-06-2913:29 8000 token essays are, but beyond that it can't keep coherence.
By bryanrasmussen 2023-06-2913:18 >The evidence is starting us in the face.
It sure is!
By grever 2023-06-301:49 [dead]
By jvm___ 2023-06-2910:31 I keep re-reading and referencing this article as it lays out how the human vs AI internet landscape is likely to shake out.
By another2another 2023-06-2911:371 reply The other possible scenario is that people who want to create new content will quickly figure out that the LLMs are basically rewriting their original research and extracting all monetary worth from it, and so stop publishing in any medium that the bots can harvest the information.
So all new discoveries will get walled off from the GPTs and we will be stuck with constantly regurgitated old information unless you go looking in paid for publications.
By cudgy 2023-06-3016:50 What other scenario is there without human contributors getting properly compensated for their time and effort?
By intothemild 2023-06-2910:23 I think this wont be sustainable, like, how long til until people stop reading LLM generated content?
By passwordoops 2023-06-2911:021 reply >The Internet and capitalism don't make a good cocktail.
Yeah what we have today is not capitalism, at least by Adam Smith's standard, and definitely not the capitalism that was practiced between the end of WW2 and Reagan.
The US desperately needs to bring their anti-trust enforcement back to the standards of the post-war era
I am definitely a fan of anti-trust, but it sounds like you're saying today's unbridled capitalism is not captialism but that when we didn't let captialism run wild by actually enforcing anti-trust regulations, that was capitalism. I am confused.
By cudgy 2023-06-3016:55 Perhaps they are taking into account the increased current corporate welfare trends.
Want money to build weapons and blow up some people outside the US? Sure no problem! Want money to recuperate from the massive investment losses your bank or company incurred due to your bad decisions? Sure no problem!
Want another $30 a month for your social security disability check to account for inflation? Nah we can’t do that!
By koheripbal 2023-06-299:561 reply You can still pay for high quality reporting. If you choose not to, then the question is back to you.
The discussion isn't about me, unless you meant the general you. However, that may be the case, but it doesn't reach the scale of the amount of people on the Internet and the pressures of that plus capitalistic markets.
Sounds more like the market doesn’t value “high quality journalism” as much anymore. Especially when you can find primary sources covering events on social media for free. At least for tech news, comments on HN are more succinct, less biased, and more hard hitting than any tech news site I’ve seen.
By berniedurfee 2023-06-2922:36 The market at large. There’s definitely a market for high quality news, but it’s too small to sustain a company.
Great bloggers, vloggers and pod casters are the new great journalists.
By bmitc 2023-06-301:38 That is my point. The Internet is like a direct tap into the more primitive emotions of humans, linking them up across the world.
By berniedurfee 2023-06-2922:28 > If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine?
I shudder to think.
It'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...
Between the things happening at Disney, and the discovery/hbo/cnn talent/production cull, I think we’re witnessing the biggest purge of the arts and journalism in the US in at least a generation.
It's kind of similar to tech. All these brilliant "executives" turned out to be complete imbeciles - unless they operate in an environment where money grows on trees and the economy is on fire (not that it's bad in the first place).
The [US] economy is actually fine, and all they know how to do is gut their own companies to "save" money.
Thats the Jack Welsch MBA school of business - gut the company, earn wealth and piss off. The fact that it destroys the society and makes the whole nation uncompetitive on the world market doesn't matter.
By bregma 2023-06-2911:07 It should read "extract excess wealth".
By boycott-israel 2023-06-299:592 reply [flagged]
By oneTbrain23 2023-06-2912:57 To be fair, these scroundrels are needed. How else the world hegemony can be taken over by the Chinese, Indian and Russian? If VOC was well managed, you and I probably speaking Dutch right now. I am off to Russian class now. Bye.
By koheripbal 2023-06-298:331 reply This statement is too broad and vague to be valuable input.
By coldtea 2023-06-299:05 A self-referencing comment?
If your task is to complete an exhaustive statistical survey on the issue, perhaps you're right, the comment is too vague.
If your intent is (as the parent's was) to contribute to a conversation by giving an opinion on what you observe happening to US journalism industry, with some example cases to illustrate the point, it's fine.
By autoexec 2023-06-291:25 > Once it was actually a part of the prestigious National Geographic Society, a non-profit.
A non-profit that shares ownership with Disney over a crappy for-profit media network sounds more like a once-prestigious non-profit that turned sell out. Hopefully there's something good left in them, but as much as we can blame Disney for what it has become it was the National Geographic Society that let the mouse in to trash the place and their reputation.
Maybe 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.
By 111111IIIIIII 2023-06-2823:54 Or maybe Disney knows they have children.
Maybe the US page is different from international versions? I'm viewing it from the UK.
By richeyryan 2023-06-298:162 reply I'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?
were ad blockers involved? i run uBO, and i too do not see the Disney themed ads.
By whimsicalism 2023-06-2823:57 on 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
By technothrasher 2023-06-2912:04 > It's a bit sad what's become of National Geographic under Disney.
It was already destroyed after Fox bought it and started putting out covers with the Virgin Mary, the Real Jesus, and the Healing Value of Faith.
By keepamovin 2023-06-291:253 reply My 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…
I inherited a lot of these too that I probably won't read. Do you want me to send mine to you?
By keepamovin 2023-06-296:18 Yeah man, that’s great! I’ll send you an email! :)
By vintermann 2023-06-298:331 reply Yeah, they weren't bad in the 90s either when I subscribed to them for a while. A lot of Bill Bryson-esque writing, anthropological portraits of places and things written with insight and empathy. (Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Bryson was one of the people writing for them).
By keepamovin 2023-06-299:11 Yeah, I also mean the ones way back. It was interesting, so fascinating. 60s to 90s vibe was good, too, and that classic editorial photography; the colors seeming to drip off the page and take me to another world. “Oil fields in Kuwait at dusk” (this was before the wars), “Women selling turnips at a market in Bangladesh”. So evocative.
By justinclift 2023-06-292:002 reply Hmmmm, I wonder when those are out of copyright and eligible for being scanned + added to something like Gutenberg?
By NoZebra120vClip 2023-06-293:36 The 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.
By coldtea 2023-06-299:14 It's not for the "many".
By ghaff 2023-06-292:50 Most 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.
