National Geographic, or Not Geo, was once the unofficial national geographer of the United States, and at some point–in 2019–the company was purchased by Walt Disney Company, where it always was a strange fit among their brands. Originally intended as a scholarly journal, National Geographic later became famous for a politically left-of-center and glossy sort of photo-driven popular magazine that focused on bringing to light areas that might be obscure to largely American audiences. For what it was, it did a decent enough job as a popular magazine, although in 2023 it was announced that it was laying off all of its staff writers and would cease printing operations, meaning that this account is probably beating a dead horse.

There is a running joke in my reviews of National Geographic books that the National Geographic brand is particularly bad when it comes to atlases and maps in general. One would think that geography would be something that a geographic company would succeed at, but as someone who has read quite a bit of their works (including at least one of them twice–today, as I write this, I finished reading their Deep Ancestry book for the second time, as I had found it in my library’s bookstacks and couldn’t remember that I had read and reviewed it between five and six years ago), they work best from the point of view of human geography. While their atlases are among the worst in existence at getting simple historical facts to support their maps accurately put on paper, they manage to do a better job when they are talking about the need to uncover the DNA of indigenous people or record languages spoken by such groups before they are completely lost to globalization. Sadly, National Geographic has itself been lost to globalization because Disney’s bean-counting executives saw it as a way to cut expenses in a company that has been drowning in red ink and failing products.

Aside from its genuinely decent work in photojournalism in obscure places and their fondness for penguins (which I share)–a fondness which is indicated by the fact that National Geographic still runs cruises that travel from Chile and Argentina to Antarctica on cruises to see adorable penguins, which is still a worthwhile existence, it must be admitted–there is a lot that National Geographic can be criticized for. Why it made the leap in 2015 to depart its existence as a somewhat staid publishing company owned privately by the National Geographic Society and followed the greed into a world where it ended up being unceremoniously axed to save money for a bloated and troubled multimedia empire is hard to understand. National Geographic has always been the sort of geographic effort that aimed at midbrow audiences, as it was accessible enough to appeal to intelligent but ordinary people, and never sensationalist enough to draw much attention from those who were not at least somewhat interested in its mission to engage in moderately popular social science. Such a modest but relatively consistent sort of achievement is not fit for a world that demands increased popularity and mass appeal.

One of the more striking aspects of the slow death of National Geographic that I have noticed is that few appear to have mourned its passing. The brand is yet another testament to the cliche: go woke, go broke, although it must be admitted that the company started going woke a long time ago when it focused on showing life on the other side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and started pushing for environmentalism in the 1970s. Its anti-biblical approach to history also hurt its accuracy in presenting ancient history in its historical atlases, it must be admitted, and it is perhaps little wonder that the National Geographic Partners thought it would be a good idea to hitch their brand onto the massive coattails of Disney, one of the largest entertainment companies in existence. It was definitely a mistake, when viewed in retrospect, but the money must have seemed good at the time. Like many bad ideas, though, the death of National Geographic was one that came about naturally with its abandonment of its core mission to bring geography to the masses in the search of profit and attention and credibility with a leftist audience. Our nation can do better as far as geography is concerned than to leave it in such unworthy hands as the rats at Disney.