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The downfall of National Geographic

jjpryor.substack.com

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Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#21

Post by concordDance »

pessimizer wrote: post #18
DeathArrow wrote: post #3

I lost interest in NG since they dumbed content down and concentrated on political correctness and being on the "right" side of the political spectrum instead of providing interesting, deeply researched and meticulously planned articles and caring more for the scientific truth instead of the political truth.

They dumbed down long before that, that was just when you noticed. It was that success in the 80s that largely killed them, because they realized that their brand pushed product. The business turned to commercial branding or retail stores and selling random stuff, culminating in becoming one of the random logos on a bland Korean fashion brand. My guess is that many who were turned off because they "went woke" loved i…

> There's still plenty of room for high-quality writing about the world and its inhabitants;

Where can this be found?

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#22

Post by admg »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #6
DeathArrow wrote: post #3

I lost interest in NG since they dumbed content down and concentrated on political correctness and being on the "right" side of the political spectrum instead of providing interesting, deeply researched and meticulously planned articles and caring more for the scientific truth instead of the political truth.

Is this true ? I haven't seen the magazine in a very long time, so I don't have a way to opine. It would be great to back this statement with facts. We have subscription to "National Geographic KIDS" , which our kids devour inside out. I really think its great. It would be sad to lose it. I would recommend the subscription to every parent looking for a non-digital window into learning about the world. Perfect gift fo…

I definitely think the content is dumbed down compared to my issues from ten years ago. Regarding the political stuff, I'd say there's a notable lean in the writing but imo that isn't the worst offender in it's decline.

The kids content they put out is great, we don't get the magazine (probably should) but have 3 or 4 of the big encyclopedia's and they're fantastic.

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#23

Post by ethbr0 »

To me, the spirit of National Geographic magazine was carried forward into their Adventure magazine, which was sadly under-advertised.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geographic_Adventur...

It ran from 1999 - 2009, and put out exactly the National Geographic content you'd expect.

Expedition-focused, with interesting stories and details about places around the world.

Sadly, I can't find an archive of their articles. They seem to be scrubbed from the main Nat Geo site?

But here's a general gist of the type of publication it was: https://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/17

Edit: A peek at an anthology: https://books.google.com/books?id=Pb8_ASogrbsC&printsec=fron...

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#24

Post by moolcool »

hospitalJail wrote: post #12

This isnt exclusive to NG. This phenomena exists for seemingly every IP. I'll give video games as an example because it seems so clear cut and many people experienced this cycle already. >A company starts out relatively small and is able to turn a profit or attract investment. They continue to be relatively unknown. >The company releases their first breakout hit (Halo, Morrowind or Oblivion, Zelda OOT). The employees…

Zelda's not the best example of this-- their mainline releases are fantastic as ever.

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#25

Post by soco »

passwert wrote: post #4

Are there any alternatives? In german speaking countries we have GEO magazine, but IMO the quality is also decreasing every year.

Are all those things indeed decreasing quality, or are we all getting old and missing those "old times"? As teenagers we definitely had different expectations from newspapers, music, life in general... maybe we are just not their target anymore.

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#26

Post by throwaway4311 »

For National Geographic, I wonder if there is another dimension that isn’t talked about: Nudity

For a significant portion of time, National Geographic was the only culturally acceptable and accessible place in the United States one could see photographs of nude women (and men).

I would guess there were millions of boys across multiple generations in the United States who saw their fist photo of a nude woman in National Geographic.

Even in the otherwise prudish Bible Belt of the United States, where Playboy would be completely verboten, even the church pastor would have an entire bookshelf devoted to National Geographic.

Then with evolving social mores, Nation Geographic had to cut down on the nudity. In addition, nudity became very, very accessible because of the Internet. These two trends cut down on one of the hidden reasons people purchased National Geographic.

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#27

Post by ginko »

moolcool wrote: post #24
hospitalJail wrote: post #12

This isnt exclusive to NG. This phenomena exists for seemingly every IP. I'll give video games as an example because it seems so clear cut and many people experienced this cycle already. >A company starts out relatively small and is able to turn a profit or attract investment. They continue to be relatively unknown. >The company releases their first breakout hit (Halo, Morrowind or Oblivion, Zelda OOT). The employees…

Zelda's not the best example of this-- their mainline releases are fantastic as ever.

Nintendo was also already a corporate behemoth by the time OoT came out.

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#28

Post by samrjack »

DeathArrow wrote: post #3

I lost interest in NG since they dumbed content down and concentrated on political correctness and being on the "right" side of the political spectrum instead of providing interesting, deeply researched and meticulously planned articles and caring more for the scientific truth instead of the political truth.

Do you have specific examples of what you mean by “concentrated on political correctness”? I absolutely agree that they dumbed down their content, but I think that’s more of a misguided push to appeal to a more general audience which just alienates their original core base. I remember seeing stuff like Doomsday Preppers being advertised several years ago which seemed antithetical to the magazines I remember my dad getting when I was a kid. It’s all quite sad…

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#29

Post by mercurialsolo »

Do you see more of this collapse of written media houses? With willingness to pay for media at an all time low + cost of production of writing going to near zero, the demise of online media publications is near inevitable.

Will we see a resurgence of a new form of personalized research replacing this void for which folks will be willing to pay for? Is there a need for intermediaries in the space? Does direct publishing and direct to consumer media and publications have a place?

Re: The downfall of National Geographic

#30

Post by yeezyszn »

cagenut wrote: post #16

Nearly every single newspaper and magazine company has the exact same revenue and subscriber growth chart over the last 20 years. Its a roughly 30-degree angle down and to the right, from a high around 2000 to todays near bankrupcy across the board. Everybody got laid off, everything is produced by freelancers hitting wordcount and postcount metrics by the hour. There's nothing special about NatGeo here, Time, Newswe…

This is the most cogent and succinct explanation for what happened. The future for print magazines is a lot more niche and lot more pricey. The internet ate the mass-market in every sphere.
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