ReverbPress reports on the day of takeover:
The memo went out, and November 3rd 2015 came to the National Geographic office. This was the day in which Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox took over National Geographic. The management of National Geographic sent out an email telling its staff, all of its staff, all to report to their headquarters, and wait by their phones. This pulled back every person who was in the field, every photographer, every reporter, even those on vacation had to show up on this fateful day.
As these phones rang, one by one National Geographic let go the award-winning staff, and the venerable institution was no more.
WaPo has more solid information:
The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000 employees in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
The reduction, the largest in the organization’s 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. The reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said.
The National Geographic Society said “involuntary separations” will represent about 9 percent of its workforce. In addition, buyout offers have been made to an undetermined number of employees.
Sad day, although not quite the wholesale slaughter ReverbPress lead me to expect. But it’s useful to keep in mind that layoffs need not have a linear impact – layoff the proper 1% of a staff and the whole enterprise can collapse – or completely change character.
I was not a subscriber, but my parents were and the exposure to NG was formative. Why not subscribe when I attained majority? Those beautiful magazines, oddly enough. They were so substantial that I didn’t want to be responsible for lugging them about, and I knew I wouldn’t reread them; and then, in the back of my mind, were the amorphous questions about disposal and the environmental impacts of actually producing the magazine. And so, I suppose, I failed them.
So this leads to questions about the future of truly high quality, leading institutions. A friend was acting out today about those loathesome ads about odd tricks to lose weight, or today’s gem – the one food to “kill diabetes”. I see these ads on sites I’d call respectable, such as CNN.com. Are they merely a bubble in the timestream, a temporary inconvenience – or are they our future? Saturated in false information, we’ll saunter on in trivialities while the institutions which delivered the world to us – no exaggeration! – are gutted by those who worship money?
(h/t Kevin McLeod on the mad cacophany we call Facebook)
