The Tragic Downfall of National Geographic
I loved my basement as a kid. The cool concrete floors, the drop-of-a-pin silence, the old mangey couch cushions that could turn a drab room into a harrowing fortress adventure — it was a grand escape. But my favorite thing was the boxes full of hundreds of old National Geographic magazines my grandmother had gifted us. Spanning decades of issues and thousands of topics, it was my version of Ali Baba’s cave, laden with treasures of untold stories, breathtaking photos, and intriguing facts. These magazines became my travel companions, my history teachers, and my watershed of a lifelong thirst for knowledge. It’s no wonder I ended up moving across the ocean to explore the world in my young adulthood — I had to experience what I saw. Even a few years later when I had the mostly awesome perk of jet-setting around the world for work, this little magazine found its way back to me. Anytime I had to take a business flight, I had two main things I needed to do: Visit Burger King, a restaurant that didn’t exist in Taiwan at the time. Buy a National Geographic magazine at the airport bookstore and consume it on the flight. This story, however, is about the magazine’s journey, not mine.National Geographic began as a scholarly journal in 1888 by the founding members of the National Geographic Society, just 33 people, comprised of wealthy donors and world explorers. Interestingly, its first president was a man named Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who co-founded the much beloved AT&T. Even more interesting, the 2nd president was Hubbard’s son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell (a fellow Canadian!) and also a co-founder of AT&T. The non-profit’s founding purpose? “a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”
0 Comments