2023-06-29 06:34:00
Fourth layoff since Fox acquisition
Articles will be produced through freelance writers
“I will meet readers on various platforms”
A bookstore owner in Islamabad, Pakistan, shows a National Geographic cover featuring Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee girl, in 2016. Appearing in the June 1985 issue, this photo is one of the magazine’s most famous covers. AP Yonhap News
The 135-year-old American magazine ‘National Geographic’ has notified all of its reporters of the dismissal. National Geographic is an authoritative monthly magazine in the field of documentary culture that once reached 12 million subscribers in the United States alone, and is still one of the most widely read magazines in the United States.
According to the Washington Post (WP) on the 28th (local time), Walt Disney, the owner of National Geographic, recently notified all of the reporters who remained at the company to be fired. The exact amount of layoffs is not known, but it is said that all journalists, including 19 editors who were notified of contract termination in April, have been notified of the layoffs. Going forward, all National Geographic articles will be produced through contracts with freelance writers.
National Geographic environmental reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Craig Welch posted a photo of the cover of the July issue on his Twitter account on the same day and wrote, “The last piece I did as a senior reporter just arrived.” “The company has fired all the reporters,” he said.
This is the fourth layoff at National Geographic since it was acquired by 21st Century Fox in 2015. The current owner, Disney, carried out a reorganization of the editing department in September of last year and sent out six veteran editors.
In addition, Disney recently announced that it will discontinue newsstand sales of magazines next year as part of cost-cutting measures. Regarding the photography content, which is the core of the magazine, the contents of the contract, which allowed photographers to spend several months on-site to obtain the desired results, were recently changed.
The WP said, “National Geographic’s photos and articles are the product of months of research and coverage.” It shows as it is,” he evaluated.
National Geographic, nicknamed “the diary of the earth,” started as an academic journal published by the “National Geographic Society,” founded in 1888 by 33 scientists, including founder Alexander Graham Bell. Since then, it has grown into a comprehensive educational center centered on photography, encompassing ecology, science, humanity, culture, archaeology, and space. At the end of the 1980s, the heyday of publications, the number of subscribers reached 12 million in the United States alone. In January 2000, a Korean version was also published.
The cover photo of a magazine symbolized by a yellow frame is said to have expanded photojournalism worldwide. Although the magazine market continues to stagnate, National Geographic is still the most widely read magazine with 1.8 million subscribers in the United States as of the end of last year.
However, in the changing environment of the decline of print media and the rise of digital news, this magazine did not escape management difficulties. The National Geographic Association, a non-profit scientific association, established National Geographic Partners, a joint venture that manages all media assets in 2015 when financial difficulties worsened, and sold 73% of its shares to 21st Century Fox.
After the sale, about 180 layoffs were carried out, the largest in the history of the magazine. Since then, rather than a magazine boasting a long history and authority, power has been put into the video business such as the cable channel of the same name and the animal channel ‘National Geo Wild’, and the cable channel has surpassed the magazine in terms of revenue and interest.
In 2019, when Disney acquired Fox, the owner of the magazine changed again. Disney, which became the world’s largest entertainment company by acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox in turn, is carrying out large-scale restructuring this year, including layoffs of 7,000 employees, or 3.6% of its global workforce.
Regarding the layoffs, National Geographic told The Wall Street Journal that the personnel changes “will not affect the company’s plans to continue publishing the monthly magazine, but rather provide more flexibility in reaching readers on a variety of platforms.”
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