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NGM, February 1976
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Chris Johns & Terry Adamson celebrate National Geographic Magazine's new publishing partnership in the People's Republic of China. (2007)
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≡ Thomas Jefferson quote & graphic via Sergio Toporek @ Beware of Images. (Be sure to check out Sergio’s upcoming documentary.)
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Tomorrow is Earth Day.
But something tells us that NGS hasn’t embraced the following initiative,
which we originally posted here on November 10, 2009,
here on April 18, 2010
and here on April 13, 2011.
We’ve now sung this chorus four times in four years.
But that’s not a rut.
It’s a Society Matters tradition.
Let’s assume that National Geographic’s mission really is to inspire people to care about the planet. Let’s also assume that the Society’s great photography and videos are the means to that end, but not the end itself. In other words: A picture of a cheetah pales in significance to the cheetah itself. If you agree, then consider this…
Imagine if our Society spearheaded a new, and very inexpensive, global initiative that would culiminate on April 22, 2010 — the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. We call it Media Blackout. It’s a campaign to recruit millions of people to set aside one day when all of us, in unison, will turn off the relentless media feed that consumes us. One day when we’ll shut off our computers, Blackberries, cell phones, iPods, TVs, Slingboxes, and any other electronic devices that mediate our world. One small step for you… one giant leap off the media grid for mankind. (Why check your email if no one is online to send you any?)
For NGS, that would mean the Society’s cable channel and web sites would go dark. If you stopped by, all you’d see for 24 hours is a one-line message:
Seize the day… and see you tomorrow.
Yes, the Society would lose one day of advertising revenue from TV and the web. But consider the payback: While every other cable channel and web site kept churning out the same old stuff, National Geographic would be sending a quiet, yet powerful message: On Earth Day, go see the Earth — because even we’ll admit that our photographs and videos are a pale representation of the real thing.
Why do this? Because although some people claim that technology helps connect us to the real world, it often encourages us to disengage instead. Think of how we often retreat into our own iGizmo-enabled bubbles when we’re out in public. Or of massive time-sucks like Facebook. Or online gaming. Or consider this magazine advertisement for a high-definition TV (at right). Reality: What a letdown. … A letdown? Really??
While Media Blackout would culminate with all of us joining a mass media exodus for a day, the project would begin months earlier on National Geographic’s web site. We’d put up a blog… interviews and guest essays… resources… a discussion forum… and, most important, tools to help people connect, face to face, with other folks in their communities to coordinate whatever activities they might choose to pursue together during the blackout. The Society could become the on-line umbrella under which people would gather to coordinate the day’s events.
At a time when media companies are panicked because they have no viable business model “going forward,” what better way for National Geographic to say: In the end, we’re not a media company, but a Society instead.
A few years ago, Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation wrote:
We’re moving from a time when the paradigm of journalism was, you shine the light, and people will see, to a time when we’re living in a world that’s just full of bright light all the time. Now we have to get people’s attention by giving them some kind of sunglasses so they can see.
For more than a century, National Geographic has provided the magic glasses to help people see the world and all that is in it. But now, overwhelmed by that “bright light all the time,” National Geographic’s Media Blackout would provide the magic (sun)glasses to help people get out and appreciate the world — rather than encouraging them to sit at home in their Barcaloungers and ogle pictures of the world.
Because as we’ve discussed before: This isn’t a woman — it’s just a collection of colored pixels on your computer screen.
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Tomorrow, Society Matters will go dark for the entire day.
Because as editors like to say: Show, don’t tell.
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David Lilienfeld was killed yesterday by a great white shark off the coast of South Africa.
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Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is the majority owner of the National Geographic Channel.
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≡ photo of David Lilienfeld via sawdis1.blogspot.com
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{ Got that right. }
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In the Los Angeles Times, Neal Gabler marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, by Daniel Boorstin:
Author Daniel J. Boorstin in May 1974. (Associated Press via The Los Angeles Times)
“… Even now on its golden anniversary, there may be no single book that has so shaped ideas about the country’s cultural transformation in the era of mass media, no single book that has so well framed how the American consciousness was reformed from one that seemed to value the genuine to one that preferred the fake. In many ways, “The Image” invented what would later become known as postmodernism — the odd cultural Moebius strip by which so many elements of our lives become imitations of themselves.
… [H]e lamented that that was exactly what mass culture was doing to the country. It was substituting the false for the true, the dark arts of public relations and self-aggrandizement for the higher purposes of human existence.
Everywhere Boorstin looked, and he looked everywhere — at journalism, at heroism, at travel, at art, even at human aspiration — he believed that the eternal verities that had once governed life had given way to something cheap and phony: a facsimile of life. Of journalism, he would say, “More and more news events become dramatic performances in which ‘men in the news’ simply act out more or less well their prepared script.” … Of travel, he would say that tourists increasingly demanded experiences that would “become bland and unsurprising reproductions of what the image-flooded tourist knew was there all the time.” …
Whether we share his anger or not, we all know we live in a world of images, a world where everything seems planned for effect rather than substance, and Boorstin no doubt would have had a field day dissecting “reality” shows that have nothing to do with reality beyond the description. They are practically designed to the specifications of Boorstin’s thesis.
Still, there are limitations to “The Image.” … Boorstin didn’t appreciate the adaptability of culture to circumstance. The fetish for images is not necessarily a blight on the world. It is its own thing — different from, not less than. Sometimes people don’t want the original. Sometimes they want the imitation, not because they are culturally brain dead but because they want release from the heavy hand of reality that Boorstin so revered.
Boorstin may not have been able to admit that because he knew too much about humankind. He knew that you couldn’t keep ‘em down in reality once they had seen the image. …”
Which is why we often say that John Fahey’s mission statement for National Geographic — if it had been vetted by the Society’s crack Research staff — would actually say: Inspiring people to care about pictures of the planet.
(I’d argue that’s not a worthwhile or a sustainable mission for the National Geographic Society — but at least it’s true.)
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“When you sever yourself from a print-based culture, and you rely on spectacle and image, and you confuse these potent mediums for understanding, then you’re doomed. Totalitarian societies are image-based societies.”
— Chris Hedges, author of The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
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{ please see update, below }
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{ Read the whole interview here. }
Dear John,
A blog network? Really?
With all due respect, blog networks run by National Geographic haven’t done well. Exhibit A: Last year, our Society bought and assumed day-to-day management of ScienceBlogs, which was then considered among the best in class.
A few months later, PZ Myers, who is one of ScienceBlogs’ marquee writers, announced a new arrangement. He’d post his straight-up science material at ScienceBlogs; he’d also cross-post that material — along with what is arguably his most popular content (his rants about religion) — on a new & independent network called FreethoughtBlogs, which launched last summer (mid 2011).
Here’s some data that compares the performance of the two sites (via Alexa.com):
It looks like National Geographic’s ownership and day-to-day management of Scienceblogs has hurt more than it has helped.
Or as we suggested last year in Battle of the Brands: National Geographic vs. PZ Myers (& friends) is actually a contest.
There’s another problem with trying to build a blog network with only a few thousand contributors: Billions of people have camera-equipped mobile phones. Which means we can’t possibly cover “the world and all that is in it” even after you tell employees to blog & you recruit thousands of park rangers to the cause.
Think about it: What are the odds that a National Geographic blogger will produce clips as good as this (wildly popular) amateur video:
Or this one:
Someone will capture equally compelling moments in the future, but the odds it’ll be someone in our network are slim to none. The world is just too big.
Then again, John, you could improve your odds of capturing the next Battle at Kruger by activating an existing network that’s massive but dormant: National Geographic Society members, still 4+ million strong. Why not give the millions of people who are still paying attention to NGS — and still paying annual dues — the ability to do something together that they’ll never be able to accomplish alone? Give them a good reason to stay — and to recruit their friends.
Monetize the network, not the content. Why? Because our membership network — its size, its affluence, and its loyalty — is unique to National Geographic. What other organization is so fortunate?
Elephant pictures, on the other hand, are everywhere… and they’re free.
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More than
470 people
want
John Fahey, CEO of NGS,
to break his virtual silence...
... and explain why our Society is:
• letting News Corp ruin our good name
• self-censoring stories about China
• befriending autocratic thugs
• recruiting for India's army
• supporting a demagogue
• profiting from killing of endangered species
• showcasing a profane provocateur
• losing itself in a virtual world
• fixating on Adolf Hitler
• marginalizing religion
• selling our Brand to a private equity fund
• and (unfortunately) much more.
Would you join us?
If so, please give this interview request
a 'thumbs up':
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