Approximately 180 National Geographic Employees Being Laid Off

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Jul 20, 2010
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#1
HTML: 
From PDNOnline:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/">National Geographic</a> has confirmed that 9 percent of their 2,000 employees (approximately 180 people) are being laid off, less than two months after the National Geographic Society announced that 21st Century Fox had acquired a controlling stake in the magazine and other media assets for $725 million. There is no word yet on how many people in National Geographic’s photography department have been affected. One photo editor for the magazine, Sherry L. Brukbacher, confirmed on Twitter that she was among the “many” let go today. In addition to the staffers being laid off, the company is offering buyouts to an unknown number of longtime employees.</p></blockquote>
<p>We sincerely hope National Geographic continues the work that is so valuable to nature and culture around the globe and beyond.</p>
 
#4
Not surprising at all. The majority of the generation of people who would purchase NG are either dead now or going out to take their own travel photos instead of just reading a book. They need to better monetize the digital market to keep their size up. Wit that said, I personally like reading NG. My 76 year old father still has a yearly subscription, but he's the only person I know who still has one. 20 years ago, every family I knew of had them.

The print market has also completely vaporized across the board. Everything is going digital these days, and people want to go out and take their own photos of exotic places instead of paying someone else to do it for them.
 
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#5
I feel for the people losing their job.

PhotographyFirst said:
...
They need to better monetize the digital market to keep their size up.
...
Click to expand...
As far as I can say for myself expecially the video reportages I've seen throughout the last few years were much too sensational: getting the effect, fast cut, no real storyboard. That turned me off.
Maybe I am not in the scope of their marketing. But if am not I'm wondering who is at all...?
How to win people with that?
 
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#6
Reminds me of Ben Stiller's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and the fictional demise of Time Magazine. Kinda sad, I guess.

When I was a kid, National Geographic was one of the few ways to get a glimpse of the amazing things in our world. The six shelves of issues we had was our "internet".

Now, if I want to learn something, I just search the web, and just about everything I wanted to know is at my fingertips. I don't know how a magazine competes with that without radical structural and even product paradigm changes.

Will be interesting to see how management attempts to pull that off. Unfortunately for employees, layoffs and streamlining are inevitable and necessary for the company's existence...
 
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#7
Sad really. As a kid, I grew up reading NG and being inspired by the images. My grand father started the NG collection for me, and I have some dating back to the 50's (before my time).

And the Canon / Nikon adverts used to always get my attention, particularly from the 70's. I suspect, that's where my GAS originated :)
 
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#9
PhotographyFirst said:
Not surprising at all. The majority of the generation of people who would purchase NG are either dead now or going out to take their own travel photos instead of just reading a book. They need to better monetize the digital market to keep their size up. Wit that said, I personally like reading NG. My 76 year old father still has a yearly subscription, but he's the only person I know who still has one. 20 years ago, every family I knew of had them.

The print market has also completely vaporized across the board. Everything is going digital these days, and people want to go out and take their own photos of exotic places instead of paying someone else to do it for them.
Click to expand...

Some of these shoots take an experienced team like 3 years to accomplish. Just the shoot for one article and you think everybody is running around and just doing this themselves now? EVen if you had the skill and money and time you could only shoot a fraction for yourself what you'd see here.
 
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#10
Mr Bean said:
Sad really. As a kid, I grew up reading NG and being inspired by the images. My grand father started the NG collection for me, and I have some dating back to the 50's (before my time).

And the Canon / Nikon adverts used to always get my attention, particularly from the 70's. I suspect, that's where my GAS originated :)
Click to expand...

I have some issues so old that there are adverts in them for things like "Spend a relaxing weekend in our radioactive spa! Rejuvenate yourself with the healing powers of radiation!".
 
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#12
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The magazine itself is a very small part of the media group that has been sold to Murdoch. I suspect it has little more than symbolic value at this point.

The Nat. Geo. Society (a non-profit org) still retains around 28% ownership of the media group so they are not entirely out of it.

The world changes; it's not 1955 anymore!!
 
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#14
LetTheRightLensIn said:
PhotographyFirst said:
Not surprising at all. The majority of the generation of people who would purchase NG are either dead now or going out to take their own travel photos instead of just reading a book. They need to better monetize the digital market to keep their size up. Wit that said, I personally like reading NG. My 76 year old father still has a yearly subscription, but he's the only person I know who still has one. 20 years ago, every family I knew of had them.

The print market has also completely vaporized across the board. Everything is going digital these days, and people want to go out and take their own photos of exotic places instead of paying someone else to do it for them.
Click to expand...

Some of these shoots take an experienced team like 3 years to accomplish. Just the shoot for one article and you think everybody is running around and just doing this themselves now? EVen if you had the skill and money and time you could only shoot a fraction for yourself what you'd see here.
Click to expand...
I agree with you, but that is the mindset of people these days. People want to be baby strollered into places like Antarctica to take their own photos these days.

As also mentioned, anyone can follow photographers on website like 500PX and Flickr or web search to find plenty of neat photos and stories for free and on-demand.
 
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#15
Here is another article, that lists some of the photo staff that were let go. This includes one of the worlds greatest photographers, Nick Nichols (a personal favorite of mine and the overall winner of last years Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition). He was set to retire in a few months so he says he does not mind, but the fact that they would fire incredible talent like that says to me they are trying to kill off a magazine that is more than a magazine, it is a cultural icon.
https://bokeh.digitalrev.com/article/rupert-murdoch-cuts-award-winning-staff-shortly-after-buying-national-geographic
 
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#16
PhotographyFirst said:
Not surprising at all. The majority of the generation of people who would purchase NG are either dead now or going out to take their own travel photos instead of just reading a book. They need to better monetize the digital market to keep their size up. Wit that said, I personally like reading NG. My 76 year old father still has a yearly subscription, but he's the only person I know who still has one. 20 years ago, every family I knew of had them.

The print market has also completely vaporized across the board. Everything is going digital these days, and people want to go out and take their own photos of exotic places instead of paying someone else to do it for them.
Click to expand...

Most people can't go to the sorts of exotic locales they go to though.
 
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#18
There was a time, long time ago, that my personal library encompassed three walls in my den
and the local library was one of my favorite places.

Those times are passed...no personal library and visits to the library haven't taken place in eight years.
Magazines...not bought any of them in quite a while.

All that replaced by a box thingy, sitting on my desk, that connects me to all the knowledge in the world.
Where's the downside?
 
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#19
Funnily enough, the kind of stories they do that I appreciate most now are precisely the ones I never read as a child - the little local ones, vignettes of life in mundane (if far away) places, especially bits of America. The huge glossy editions on things like Mount St Helens and the moons of Saturn that captivated my young mind are now much much better served by the internet - but I'm not sure the other kind is. I suppose you could trawl through local news sites for features on their area, but a lot of local media has disappeared too, so maybe not.

Is there a link to Murdoch? It seems too much of a coincidence, but I'd like an insider's view. If it was him, it speaks strongly against media moguls buying stuff and trashing them - which he is a past master in, of course.
 
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