Rachel: 1000 years old and made out of bats; a funny, curvy, green-eyed girl; a writer, a historian, forever a Buffalo girl at heart. Stress-baker, dystopian librarian, and full-time trouble magnet. Let's have some fun.
National Geographic, the iconic yellow framed magazine that has chronicled the natural world for more than 100 years, laid off its last remaining staff writers this week, multiple departing staffers said.
The latest round of layoffs at the magazine cut 17 editorial positions, including all of the publication’s staff writers, its entire podcast staff, and a group of editors, including one who’d been on staff for nearly 40 years, a former staff writer affected by the layoffs told CNN.
The layoffs, which were announced to the staff in April, were part of a wave of cuts from parent company Disney, which resulted in thousands of positions being axed across the media giant. Most National Geographic staffers at the time were told their positions would be eliminated in two months, resulting in many of the departures this week, the former staffer said.
It was unclear how many staffers were cut during the latest round of layoffs at the magazine, but the move comes as parent company Walt Disney Co. has slashed thousands of staffers across its divisions this year.
National Geographic, which had more than 1.7 million subscribers at the end of 2022, will continue to publish monthly issues, a magazine spokesperson told CNN in a statement on Wednesday. “Staffing changes will not change our ability to do this work, but rather give us more flexibility to tell different stories and meet our audiences where they are across our many platforms,” the spokesperson said. “Any insinuation that the recent changes will negatively impact the magazine, or the quality of our storytelling, is simply incorrect.”
The full-time staff will be replaced by a roster of freelance writers, save for certain digital content that will be written by in-house editors, the former staffer said. National Geographic currently employs only two designated text editors, a group of so-called multi-platform editors who handle both print and digital, and a group of digital-only editors, the former staffer said.
The magazine also employs two wildlife watch reporters whose positions are funded and managed separately, the former staffer said.
News of the layoffs was reported on Twitter Tuesday when departing magazine staff writers began to circulate the news. “Today is my last day at National Geographic,” Michael Greshko, a former science writer at the magazine, tweeted. “The magazine is parting ways with its staff writers, including me.”
Yet, when CNN contacted the magazine on Tuesday, a spokesperson said there was “nothing to report.”
“It’s possible that what you’re seeing is from staffers who were previously impacted and have now reached their final week at the company,” the spokesperson said.
But on Wednesday, more staff writers for the magazine took to Twitter to share the news of their departure.
“My new National Geographic just arrived, which includes my latest feature — my 16th, and my last as a senior writer,” tweeted Craig Welch. “NatGeo is laying off all of its staff writers.” “It’s been an epic run, @NatGeo,” tweeted former writer Nina Strochlic. “My colleagues and I were unbelievably lucky to be the last-ever class of staff writers.”
My one complaint is the original version did actually list the stuff in chronological order. This version just lists them at random.
While I can understand why the lack of chronological order is a bit disappointing, since that’s one of the things that makes the original’s lyrics so damn impressive, I don’t think this version is random. At least a significant chunk of it seems to be thematically related.
For example: “Unabomber, Bobbit, John, Bombing Boston Marathon, Balloon Boy, War on Terror, Qanon”
That section begins with appaling crimes, two of which are domestic terrorism events, and then transitions to things where people were whipped into an outrage over a transparent lie - the Balloon Boy Story, the War on Terror, and Qanon, which increase in severity . It draws this throughline of events where people in this country got more and more radicalized by what is essentially bullshit lies, with increasingly violent results, until it ends up BACK at domestic terrorism with Qanon.
Or try my favorite, the section that hit me in my gut: “Sandy Hook, Columbine, Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice.” Two school shootings, two people of color who were killed by police cruelty. All four were events that were so shocking at the time that people briefly believed they would incite real change - most people have forgotten Columbine these days, but at the time it was such a horrific school shooting that people seemed convinced we’d find some sort of solution to end that problem once and for all. Instead we’ve gotten to the point where there’s basically at least one Columbine scale massacre a month. And when we thought we were numb to school shootings, just about when Columbine became less than a footnote in our history, Sandy Hook shook us again, because children were involved this time. But it too amounted to nothing, it too was forgotten. We thought the cruelty of police brutality would finally be impossible to ignore when they drove a woman to hang herself, or when they shot an innocent child like Tamir Rice, but here it is, continuing unabated.
We didn’t start the fire, though we tried to fight it. I dunno, I think there’s still some cleverness here.
the nascar fandom is in shambles rn bc the official account posted #yascar with a link to pride merchandise and a real life reply was ‘smh no longer supporting nascar has been going downhill since they banned the confederate flag’
like fr fr
Man, I kinda wanna be like Silence Brand! but unfortunately “Yascar” is like really, really funny
This is a map of the range of all giraffe species. By my count that puts them in just 16 countries out of the 54 in Africa (of which 5 are island countries with no territory on the continental mainland). That’s 30%, quite a long way shy of all, and as you can see many of those countries that do have giraffes only have a tiny portion of their territory within giraffes’ habitats
Wow, I knew they weren’t in “every African country”, but I didn’t realize just how restricted their range was
Good teachers don’t mind saying “I don’t know” or that they need to look it up and will get back to you.
Not only that but giraffes in different areas have different patterns and it’s so cool
Wheres that “before pride month ends does anyone want to admit they have a crush on me” post, like I know it’s only the 11th but I cant stop thinking abt it
What kind of wizard is the person you reblogged this from? (Please answer in poll and tags to track both the most common and most influential wizard archetypes)
This looks like a fucking parody post, or an edgy edit, but it’s 100% official real Flintstones.
Clarification: I don’t hate this book, I love it, it’s amazing. It’s just that taking a step back and looking it out of context is still really funny. Especially the line “We participated in a genocide, Barney.”
ok but imagine them in their cartoon forms saying this dialogue i’m
can we have some context to this, perhaps?
Bedrock is having a mayoral election. One of the candidates is a violent war mongering asshole that riles people up against the lizard people. This reminds Fred and Barney of their time in the army.
Back then the father of said violent candidate was riling people up against the “tree people”. Fred, Barney, and other soldiers fought what they believed to be a defensive measure against the tree people. Turns out, it was actually an invasion, in order to kill off the tree people and take over their forest to build Bedrock.
That’s what Fred means when he says he and Barney participated in a genocide. They literally did.
(Extra fun fact, Barney adopted a tree person baby after the war, and his son Bamm-Bamm is the last tree person.)
