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from the acquisition-followed-by-gutting-of-the-workforce dept.
It's as bad as many of us feared. In spite of the "happy talk" of "oh, his son will be running it and he's different", "Rupert wouldn't destroy an asset like Nat Geo", etc., the axe fell on [November 3].
The memo went out, and November 3rd 2015 came to the National Geographic office. This was the day in which Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox took over National Geographic. The management of National Geographic sent out an email telling its staff—all of its staff—all to report to their headquarters, and wait by their phones. This pulled back every person who was in the field, every photographer, every reporter, even those on vacation had to show up on this fateful day.
As these phones rang, one by one National Geographic let go the award-winning staff, and the venerable institution was no more.
[...] The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000-member workforce in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
The reduction, the largest in the organization's 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. It also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel's fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said...
In addition to the layoffs and buyouts, National Geographic Society said it would freeze its pension plan for eligible employees, eliminate medical coverage for future retirees and change its contributions to an employee 401(k) plan so that all employees receive the same percentage contribution.
[...] Other articles hint that this may just be the beginning of the layoffs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @12:48AM
I'll miss the outstanding photography. I still remember buying an EOS 5D Mark II when it was new, and hearing about how a National Geographic photographer had called in asking about the availability of extra batteries, before heading out to somewhere in Malaysia or somewhere tropical for a wildlife shoot. Hopefully a new preservation non-profit will start up, but I doubt that there are any billionaires similar to the Grosvenors.
Rupert Murdoch truly does ruin everything he touches. I expect his sons to uphold his reputation of the simultaneous Midas / Anti-Midas Touch.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2015, @12:58AM
Man, I remember loving Time and Newsweek as a kid. They were ways about reading what was going on in the world at a more deep level than the sound-bites on the news, there were very few or no ads. Then I stopped reading for awhile, picked up my old friend off the newsstand.
Half the magazine was ads. There were at least two articles about meaningless pop-culture bullshit and a lot less variety of viewpoints throughout the magazine. As I squeezed that last shit out my asshole I decided that Newsweek wasn't even fit for a home on the top of the toilet, and subsequently wiped my ass with it. I've read more tabloids more scholarly than the current editions of Newsweek.
Might as well not pick up my other old friend, National Geographic, the only porn (if you count topless African tribeswomen) my parents let me read as a kid. I shudder to think what kind of petty political bullshit and neutered half-truths lie in it now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @04:57AM
...Anti-Midas Touch.
An old friend calls this the Sadim Touch -- everything you touch turns to shit.