....but it's been coming for a while. National Geographic Magazine has laid off its staff writers, which of course means that the eminent yellow magazine is going to have more than a little bit of trouble going forward.
Or perhaps, it can go back to what it used to be. I'm a collector of old National Geographics, going all the way back into the 1920s, and there was an amateur, "clubby" feel about the magazine--and in doing so, what was found was that these amateurs--generally university graduates from the upper classes--would get into places that a lot of professionals could not. They also had the knack for taking complex issues and writing about them in such a way that readers didn't necessarily know their biases--really the same way a lot of journalists used to do in general.
And then in the late 1990s, I noticed that this mood was gone. Replacing this was a general mood "we are going to tell you what to believe", really the same kind of thing that plagues journalism everywhere, the reason that Newsweak sold for $1 (and a bargain at a few bucks less) a while back.
So I was at first sad at this news, but if they play their cards right--re-accessing the wealth of supporters they had a century ago and more--they might be more than readable again.
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