History Of National Georaphic

National Geographic, which was formerly called The National Geographic Magazine, is a monthly magazine produced in the United States by National Geographic Partners.

The magazine was established as an academic publication nine months after the organization was formed in 1888, but it has now become a popular magazine. It started to include images in 1905, which is when it became famous for that design.

The earliest color photographs were taken in the 1910s. The journal made a commitment to provide a fair perspective on the physical and human landscape of nations outside the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. The journal later grew more vocal about environmental problems.

The National Geographic Society was the sole owner and manager of the magazine until 2015. National Geographic Partners has maintained the majority shareholding since 2015.

The subjects of the features usually include geography, history, wildlife, science, and global culture.

The magazine is easily recognizable because of its unique look, which has a thick square-bound glossy format with a yellow rectangle border. Subscriptions come with map supplements from National Geographic Maps, which are available in both a conventional printed version and an interactive online edition.

As of 1995, the magazine was disseminated internationally in almost forty local-language versions and had a global circulation of at least 6.5 million per month including 3.5 million inside the U.S., down from roughly 12 million in the late 1980s. The magazine has received 25 National Magazine Awards by 2015.

In 2023, National Geographic stated that they would be laying off all of their staff writers and that they would cease selling their magazine in stores in the United States the following year.

As of November 2024, its Instagram feed has 280 million followers, making it the third most-followed account that is not owned by a single celebrity.

As of June 30, 2024, the magazine's total circulation in the United States and internationally was around 1.65 million. The readership of its children's publications was approximately 500,000.

Eight months after the Society was created, the inaugural edition of the National Geographic Magazine was released on September 22, 1888. Gardiner Greene Hubbard writes in the first issue,

At first, it was a scientific publication that was mailed to 165 charter members. By 2010, it was reaching 40 million people per month.

The journal started to shift from being focused on text to containing a lot of graphical information when it published six full-page photos of Tibet in January 1905. These pictures were taken in 1900 and 1901. More over half of the pages in the magazine were photos by 1908.

The magazine's cover in June 1985 featured a picture of a 12-year-old Afghan girl named Sharbat Gula. The photograph was taken by Steve McCurry and has since become one of the magazine's most famous photos.

The journal started releasing The Complete National Geographic, which is an electronic compilation of every former issue of the magazine, in the late 1990s.

It was later sued for copyright infringement of the magazine as a collective work in Greenberg v. National Geographic and other cases, and the compilation was temporarily removed. In July 2009, the magazine started publishing all of its former issues up to December 2008 when it ultimately won the lawsuit.

The archive and electronic version of the magazine are accessible online to the magazine's subscribers. More current issues were added to the collection at a later time.

The National Geographic Society transferred ownership of the magazine to National Geographic Partners in September 2015.

In return for $725 million, 21st Century Fox received a 73% controlling stake in the magazine. In December 2017, it was revealed that Disney will be acquiring 21st Century Fox, which includes the majority stake in National Geographic Partners.The deal was finalized in March of 2019.

The publishing section of NG Media was moved into Disney Publishing Worldwide as part of an operational transfer.