National Geographic fires its last permanent journalists
Disney-owned National Geographic magazine has fired the last of its remaining regular reporters and replaced them with freelancers, making it the latest outlet to slash jobs amid uncertain economic conditions, The Epoch Times reported. .
Following job cuts earlier this year, only 19 members of the editorial department remained, according to The Washington Post . The remaining staff members would be notified of the impending layoff in April.
The latest layoffs are the second in a few months as parent company Disney looks to cut costs. In September, the award-winning Washington magazine also reportedly fired six top editors who specialize in a range of popular topics such as travel, science and the environment.
A spokesman for the newspaper confirmed the latest departures in a statement released to TheWrap, but declined to specify the exact number of employees fired.
“National Geographic will continue to publish a monthly magazine dedicated to outstanding cross-platform storytelling with cultural impact,” the spokesperson said. “The staffing changes won't change our ability to do this job, but rather give us more flexibility to tell different stories and meet our audience where they are across our many platforms. Any insinuation that the recent changes will negatively impact the magazine or the quality of our storytelling is simply incorrect,” they continued.
Several editors also confirmed their departures from the publication on Twitter, including senior writer Craig Welch, who tweeted that National Geographic is "firing all reporters of its own." “I was very lucky. I was able to work with incredible journalists and tell important and global stories. It was an honor,” he wrote.
Elsewhere, former writer Nina Strochlic tweeted that it was an "epic time," adding that she and her colleagues were "incredibly lucky to be the last class of writers on the staff."
It's been an epic run, @NatGeo . My colleagues and I were unbelievably lucky to be the last-ever class of staff writers—certainly the coolest job I'll ever have, and possibly among the coolest to ever exist. Now onto the next thing! Open to all weird/fun/interesting ideas. pic.twitter.com/aFNPRSDyt0
— Nina Strochlic (@NinaStrochlic) June 28, 2023
Douglas Main, writer and senior editor of the publication, also took to Twitter to communicate his departure from the publication.
“ National Geographic is firing its editors, myself included. It has been five wonderful years, an honor and a joy. I am very proud of the work my colleagues and I have done here ,” he wrote, adding: “ We were made aware of this some time ago.”
In the future, assignments will either be outsourced to freelancers or cobbled together by remaining editors, as reported by the Washington Post. The latest job cut also eliminated the magazine's small audio department, according to the publication.
Also, starting next year, National Geographic will no longer be sold on newsstands in the United States as part of additional cost-cutting measures, according to the Washington Post.
According to the Alliance for Audited Media, National Geographic had just under 1.8 million subscribers at the end of 2022.
Not just National Geographic
In November, CNN began a second round of layoffs, and a month later, in December, Buzzfeed said it planned to cut 15% of its workforce. Most recently, Buzzfeed revealed that, as part of these cost-cutting efforts, it is shutting down its news division entirely.
The VICE Media Group (VMG) has also laid off more than 100 employees and canceled its flagship program "Vice News Tonight". In May, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A number of other news outlets, including Bloomberg, Gannett, Insider Inc., NPR, The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post and Fox, have announced job cuts over the past few months.
How long will the free ride in Italy last?
How long will it be before so many mainstream media journalists in Italy are definitively replaced by interns and artificial intelligence? Certainly not much. After all, to publish the showgirls of Brussels or of some information service of a large company, you don't need to have journalists. Just a good copy-paste…
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The article National Geographic fires the last permanent journalists comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-national-geographic-licenzia-gli-ultimi-giornalisti-dipendenti-fissi/ on Fri, 30 Jun 2023 15:16:44 +0000.