National Geographic
American monthly magazine
- 11 min read
- 10 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Cold War, Physical geography and Human geography
Until 2015, the magazine was completely owned and managed by the National Geographic Society. Since 2015, controlling interest has been held by National Geographic Partners. Topics of features generally concern geography, history, nature, science, and world culture. The magazine is well known for its distinctive appearance: a thick square-bound glossy format with a yellow rectangular border. Map supplements from National Geographic Maps are included with subscriptions, and it is available in a traditional printed edition and an interactive online edition.
As of 1995, the magazine was circulated worldwide in nearly forty local-language editions and had a global circulation of at least 6.5 million per month including 3.5 million within the U.S., down from about 12 million in the late 1980s. As of 2015, the magazine had won 25 National Magazine Awards. In 2023, National Geographic laid off all staff writers and announced they would stop U.S. newsstand sales in the next year. As of November 2024, its Instagram page has 280 million followers, the third most of any account not belonging to an individual celebrity. The magazine's combined U.S. and international circulation as of June 30, 2024, was about 1.65 million, with its children's magazines separately achieving a circulation of about 500,000.
History
The first issue of the National Geographic Magazine was published on September 22, 1888, eight months after the Society was founded. In the first issue, Gardiner Greene Hubbard writes,
The "National Geographic Society" has been organized to "increase and defuse geographic knowledge", and the publication of a Magazine has been determined upon as one means accomplishing these purposes.
It was initially a scholarly journal sent to 165 charter members; in 2010, it reached the hands of 40 million people each month. Starting with its January 1905 publication of several full-page pictures of Tibet in 1900–01, the magazine began to transition from being a text-oriented publication to featuring extensive pictorial content. By 1908 more than half of the magazine's pages were photographs. The June 1985 cover portrait of a twelve-year-old Afghan girl Sharbat Gula, shot by photographer Steve McCurry, became one of the magazine's most recognizable images.
In 1965, the National Geographic Society begin producing TV specials on CBS, in partnership with Wolper Productions, called the National Geographic Specials. The first special became a ratings hit. The specials moved to ABC in 1973, then PBS in 1975 and WQED took over from Wolper Productions. National Geographic split from WQED in 1992. The specials moved to NBC in 1994, and remained there until 2000.
National Geographic Kids, the children's version of the magazine, was launched in 1975 under the name National Geographic World.
At its peak in the late 1980s, the magazine had 12 million subscribers in the United States, and millions more outside of the U.S.
In the late 1990s, the magazine began publishing The Complete National Geographic, an electronic collection of every past issue of the magazine. It was then sued over copyright of the magazine as a collective work in Greenberg v. National Geographic and other cases, and temporarily withdrew the compilation. The magazine eventually prevailed in the dispute, and in July 2009 resumed publishing all past issues through December 2008. More recent issues were later added to the collection; the archive and electronic edition of the magazine are available online to the magazine's subscribers.
In September 2015, the National Geographic Society moved the magazine to a new owner, National Geographic Partners, giving 21st Century Fox a 73% controlling interest in exchange for $725 million. In December 2017, a deal was announced for Disney to acquire 21st Century Fox, including the controlling interest in National Geographic Partners. The acquisition was completed in March 2019. NG Media publishing unit was operationally transferred into Disney Publishing Worldwide.
In September 2022, the magazine laid off six of its top editors. In June 2023, the magazine laid off all of its staff writers, shifting to an entirely freelance-based writing model, and announced that beginning in 2024 it would no longer offer newsstand purchases.
In June 2026, The National Geographic Society will open the National Geographic Museum of Exploration in Washington, D.C.
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Administration
Editors-in-chief
The magazine had a single "editor" from 1888 to 1920. From 1920 to 1967, the chief editorship was held by the president of the National Geographic Society. Since 1967, the magazine has been overseen by its own "editor" and/or "editor-in-chief". The list of editors-in-chief includes three generations of the Grosvenor family between 1903 and 1980.
- Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor (1875–1966): (editor-in-chief: February 1903 – January 1920; managing editor: September 1900 – February 1903; assistant editor: May 1899 – September 1900)
- John Oliver La Gorce (1879–1959): (May 1954 – January 1957) (president of the society at the same time)
- Melville Bell Grosvenor (1901–1982): (January 1957 – August 1967) (president of the society at the same time) (thereafter editor-in-chief to 1977)
- Frederick Vosburgh (1905–2005): (August 1967 – October 1970)
- Gilbert Melville Grosvenor (born 1931): (October 1970 – July 1980) (then became president of the society)
- Wilbur E. Garrett: (July 1980 – April 1990)
- William Graves: (April 1990 – December 1994)
- William L. Allen: (January 1995 – January 2005)
- Chris Johns: (January 2005 – April 2014) (first "editor-in-chief" since MBG)
- Susan Goldberg: (April 2014 – April 2022)
- Nathan Lump: (May 2022 – present)
Articles
During the Cold War, the magazine committed itself to present a balanced view of the physical and human geography of countries beyond the Iron Curtain. The magazine printed articles on Berlin, de-occupied Austria, the Soviet Union, and Communist China that deliberately downplayed politics to focus on culture. In its coverage of the Space Race, National Geographic focused on the scientific achievement while largely avoiding reference to the race's connection to nuclear arms buildup. There were also many articles in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s about the individual states and their resources, along with supplementary maps of each state. Many of these articles were written by longtime staff such as Frederick Simpich.
After 21st Century Fox acquired controlling interest in the magazine, articles became outspoken on topics such as environmental issues, deforestation, chemical pollution, global warming, and endangered species. Series of articles were included focusing on the history and varied uses of specific products such as a single metal, gem, food crop, or agricultural product, or an archaeological discovery. Occasionally an entire month's issue would be devoted to a single country, past civilization, a natural resource whose future is endangered, or other themes. In recent decades, the National Geographic Society has unveiled other magazines with different focuses. Whereas the magazine featured lengthy expositions in the past, recent issues have included shorter articles.
Photography
In addition to being well known for articles about scenery, history, and the most distant corners of the world, the magazine has been recognized for its book-like quality and the high standard of its photography. It was during the tenure of Society President Alexander Graham Bell and editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor (GHG) that the significance of illustration was first emphasized, in spite of criticism from some of the Board of Managers who considered the many illustrations an indicator of an "unscientific" conception of geography. By 1910, photographs had become the magazine's trademark and Grosvenor was constantly on the search for "dynamical pictures" as Graham Bell called them, particularly those that provided a sense of motion in a still image. In 1915, GHG began building the group of staff photographers and providing them with advanced tools including the latest darkroom.
The magazine began to feature some pages of color photography in the early 1930s, when this technology was still in its early development. During the mid-1930s, Luis Marden (1913–2003), a writer and photographer for National Geographic, convinced the magazine to allow its photographers to use the so-called "miniature" 35 mm Leica cameras loaded with Kodachrome film over bulkier cameras with heavy glass plates that required the use of tripods. In 1959, the magazine started publishing small photographs on its covers, later becoming larger photographs. National Geographic photography quickly shifted to digital photography for both its printed magazine and its website. In subsequent years, the cover, while keeping its yellow border, shed its oak leaf trim and bare table of contents, to allow for a full-page photograph taken for one of the month's articles. Issues of National Geographic are often kept by subscribers for years and re-sold at thrift stores as collectibles. The standard for photography has remained high over the subsequent decades and the magazine is still illustrated with some of the highest-quality photojournalism in the world. In 2006, National Geographic began an international photography competition, with more than eighteen countries participating.
Map supplement
"A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams."
Supplementing the articles, the magazine sometimes provides maps of the regions visited. National Geographic Maps (originally the Cartographic Division) became a division of the National Geographic Society in 1915. The first supplement map, which appeared in the May 1918 issue of the magazine, titled The Western Theatre of War, served as a reference for overseas military personnel and soldiers' families alike. On some occasions, the Society's map archives have been used by the United States government in instances where its own cartographic resources were limited. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House map room was filled with National Geographic maps. A National Geographic map of Europe is featured in the displays of the Winston Churchill museum in London showing Churchill's markings at the Yalta Conference where the Allied leaders divided post-war Europe.
In 2001, National Geographic released an eight-CD-ROM set containing all its maps from 1888 to December 2000. Printed versions are also available from the National Geographic website.
Language editions
Active
In April 1995, National Geographic began publishing in Japanese, its first local language edition. The magazine is currently published in 29 local editions around the world.
Discontinued
The following local-language editions have been discontinued.
In association with Trends Publications in Beijing and IDG Asia, National Geographic has been authorized for "copyright cooperation" in China to publish the yellow-border magazine, which launched with the July 2007 issue of the magazine with an event in Beijing on July 10, 2007, and another event on December 6, 2007, in Beijing also celebrating the 29th anniversary of normalization of U.S.–China relations featuring former President Jimmy Carter. The mainland China version is one of the two local-language editions that bump the National Geographic logo off its header in favor of a local-language logo; the other one is the Persian version published under the name Gita Nama.
In April 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian version of National Geographic was discontinued. Its publication team then launched the Russian Traveler, which is not associated with the National Geographic brand.
Distribution
In the United States, National Geographic is available only to subscribers beginning with the January 2024 issue. For the first 110 years of the magazine's existence, membership in the National Geographic Society was the only way to receive it. Newsstand sales, which began in 1998, ceased in 2023, following a year of layoffs and a shift in focus to digital formats amid the decline of the print media industry.
Worldwide editions are sold on newsstands in addition to regular subscriptions. In several countries, such as Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Turkey and Ukraine, National Geographic paved the way for a subscription model in addition to traditional newsstand sales.
In Mexico, National Geographic en Español magazine stopped its printing with the February 2025 issue.
Awards
On May 1, 2008, National Geographic won three National Magazine Awards—an award solely for its written content—in the reporting category for an article by Peter Hessler on the Chinese economy; an award in the photojournalism category for work by John Stanmeyer on malaria in the Third World; and a prestigious award for general excellence.
Between 1980 and 2011, the magazine has won a total of 24 National Magazine Awards.
In May 2006, 2007, and 2011, National Geographic magazine won the American Society of Magazine Editors' General Excellence Award in the over two million circulation category. In 2010, National Geographic Magazine received the top ASME awards for photojournalism and essay. In 2011, National Geographic Magazine received the top-award from ASME – the Magazine of the Year Award.
In April 2014, National Geographic received the National Magazine Award ("Ellie") for best tablet edition for its multimedia presentation of Robert Draper's story "The Last Chase", about the final days of a tornado researcher who was killed in the line of duty.
In February 2017, National Geographic received the National Magazine Award ("Ellie") for best website. National Geographic won the 2020 Webby Award for News & Magazines in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice. National Geographic won the 2020 Webby Award and Webby People's Voice Award for Magazine in the category Web.
Controversies
On the magazine's February 1982 cover, the pyramids of Giza were altered, resulting in the first major scandal of the digital photography age and contributing to photography's "waning credibility".
The cover of the October 1988 issue featured a photo of an ivory bust of a male, whose authenticity, particularly the alleged ice age provenance, has been questioned.
In 1999, the magazine was embroiled in the Archaeoraptor scandal, in which it purported to have a fossil linking birds to dinosaurs. The fossil was a forgery.
In 2010, the magazine's Your Shot competition was awarded to American filmmaker and photographer William Lascelles for a photograph presented as a portrait of a dog with fighter jets flying over its shoulder. Lascelles had in reality created the image using photo editing software.
After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, National Geographic published maps with the Crimean peninsula marked as "contested", contrary to international norms.
In March 2018, the editor of National Geographic, Susan Goldberg, said that historically the magazine's coverage of people around the world had been racist. Goldberg stated that the magazine ignored non-white Americans and showed different groups as exotic, thereby promoting racial clichés. National Geographic even stated that "their coverage of people around the world was racist" Shortly after Goldberg's comment.
List of National Geographic milestones
This is a list of National Geographic milestones featuring turning points in the magazine's history including writing and photography assignments, design aspects, cartography and sponsored expeditions.