NEW YORK: National Geographic, the famous yellow-framed magazine, has laid off its last remaining staff writers, leaving the venerable, award-winning magazine to be pieced together by editors and freelancers.
The Washington-based magazine, which has surveyed science and the natural world for 135 years, will no longer be available on newsstands in the US as of next year, the Washington Post reported.
The layoffs involved 19 editorial staffers, who were notified in April that these terminations were coming,
The cuts also eliminated the magazine's small audio department, the report said.
Article assignments will be contracted to freelancers or pieced together by the few editors remaining on staff.
Many departing employees confirmed the news on Twitter.
"My new National Geographic just arrived, which includes my latest feature—my 16th, and my last as a senior writer," wrote Craig Welch, whose award-winning work has graced many a cover and shed light on urgent environmental issues. "NatGeo is laying off all of its staff writers. I've been so lucky. I got to work (with) incredible journalists and tell important, global stories. It's been an honour."
"National Geographic is laying off its staff writers, including me," he wrote on Twitter. "It's been a wonderful five years—an honour and a joy. I am very proud of the work that my colleagues and I have done here."
The layoffs at National Geographic by the publication's parent company, Disney, were the second over the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015.
Owned since 2019 by the Walt Disney Co., the 135-year-old chronicler of the natural world has seen a slew of job reductions over the past several years, including an unprecedented layoff of six top editors last September, the Post reported.
Founded by the National Geographic Society (which remains a minority partner) in 1888, the magazine was sold to 21st Century Fox in 2015. Disney snagged a majority stake when it bought Rupert Murdoch-controlled 21st Century Fox for US$71 billion in 2019, per the Post. Before the Fox purchase, the magazine's parent company cut 200 employees, or nine per cent of its staff, via layoffs and buyouts.
The collectible magazine, chock full of articles and photos that took months to research and prepare, had 12 million US subscribers in its heyday in the 1980s and another few million more around the world, the Post noted. At the end of 2022, it had fewer than 2 million subscribers in the US.
