National Geographic (magazine)

March 2009 cover of National Geographic

National Geographic (magazine)

Editor	Chris Johns
Categories	Geography, Science, History, Nature
Frequency	Monthly
First issue	October 1888[1]
Company	National Geographic Society
Country	United States
Based in	Washington, D.C.
Language	English
Website	www.nationalgeographic.com (Currently down. 4 Sep 2011 20:52)
ISSN	0027-9358

National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, is the official journal of the National Geographic Society. It published its first issue in 1888, just nine months after the Society itself was founded. It is immediately identifiable by the characteristic yellow frame that surrounds its front cover.
There are 12 monthly issues of the National Geographic per year, plus additional map supplements. On rare occasions, special editions are issued. It contains articles about geography, popular science, history, culture, current events, and photography.
With a worldwide circulation in thirty-three language editions of nearly nine million, more than fifty million people receive the magazine every month. In May 2007, 2008, and 2010 National Geographic magazine won the American Society of Magazine Editors' General Excellence Award in the over two million circulation category. In 2010, National Geographic Magazine received the top ASME awards for photojournalism and essay.

Administration

The current Editor-in-Chief of the National Geographic Magazine is Chris Johns, who was named Editor of the Year in October 2008 by Advertising Age magazine at the American Magazine Conference.
Society Executive Vice President and President of the Magazine Group Declan Moore has overall responsibility for magazines at the National Geographic Society. He reports to Tim Kelly, President, National Geographic Global Media, and new National Geographic Society president. Terry B. Adamson, Executive Vice President of the Society and the Society's chief legal officer and heads governmental relations, has overall responsibility for the Society's international publications, including National Geographic magazine.

History

January 1915 cover of The National Geographic Magazine

The first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published in October 1888, just nine months after the Society itself was founded. The hallmark of National Geographic, reinventing it from a text-oriented entity closer to a scientific journal, to a magazine famous for exclusive pictorial footage, was its January 1905 publication of several full-page pictures made in Tibet in 1900–1901 by two explorers from the Russian Empire, Gombojab Tsybikov and Ovshe Norzunov. The June 1985 cover portrait of 13-year-old Afghan girl Sharbat Gula became one of the magazine's most recognizable images.
In the late 1990s and 2000s, prolonged litigation over copyright of the magazine as a collective work in Greenberg v. National Geographic and other cases caused National Geographic to withdraw from the market The Complete National Geographic, a digital compilation of all its past issues of the magazine. Two different federal appellate courts have now ruled in National Geographic's favor in permitting an electronic reproduction of the paper magazine and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in December 2008. In July 2009 National Geographic announced a new version of The Complete National Geographic, containing all issues of the magazine from 1888 through December 2008. An updated version was released the next year, adding the issues from 2009; these issues are also available on a separate disc for owners of the original version. Updates for subsequent years of the magazine's archive are scheduled to be made available on an annual basis.
In 2006, National Geographic writer Paul Salopek was arrested and charged with espionage, entering Sudan without a visa, and other crimes by the government of Sudan while on assignment for a feature article. After National Geographic and the Chicago Tribune, for whom Salopek also wrote, mounted a legal defense and led an international appeal to Sudan, he was eventually released.

Articles

During the Cold War, the magazine committed itself to presenting a balanced view of the physical and human geography of nations beyond the Iron Curtain. The magazine printed articles on Berlin, de-occupied Austria, the Soviet Union, and Communist China that deliberately downplayed politics to focus on culture. In its coverage of the Space Race, National Geographic focused on the scientific achievement while largely avoiding reference to the race's connection to nuclear arms buildup.
In later years articles became outspoken on issues such as environment, deforestation, chemical pollution, global warming, and endangered species. Series of articles were included focusing on the history and varied uses of specific products such as a single metal, gem, food crop, or agricultural product, or an archaeological discovery. Occasionally an entire month's issue would be devoted to a single country, past civilization, a natural resource whose future is endangered, or other theme. In recent decades, the National Geographic Society has unveiled other magazines with different focuses. Whereas in the past, the Magazine featured lengthy expositions, recent issues have shorter, but nevertheless tighter articles.

Photography

Color photograph of the Taj Mahal. Source: The National Geographic Magazine, March 1921

In addition to being well-known for articles about scenery, history, and the most distant corners of the world, the magazine has been recognized for its book-like quality and its standard of photography. This standard makes it the home to some of the highest-quality photojournalism in the world. The magazine began to feature color photography in the early 20th century, when this technology was still rare. During the 1930s, Luis Marden (1913–2003), a writer and photographer for National Geographic, convinced the magazine to allow its photographers to use small 35 mm cameras loaded with Kodachrome film over bulkier cameras with tripods and glass plates. In 1959, the magazine started publishing small photographs on its covers, later becoming larger photographs. National Geographic photography has quickly shifted to digital photography for both its magazine on paper and its website. In subsequent years, the magazine cover, while keeping its yellow border, shed its oak leaf trim and bare table of contents, for a large photograph taken from one of the month's articles inside. Issues of National Geographic are often kept by subscribers for years and re-sold at thrift stores as collectible back-issues. In 2006, National Geographic began an international photography competition with over eighteen countries participating.
In conservative Muslim countries like Iran and Malaysia, photographs featuring topless or scantily-clad members of primitive tribal societies are often blacked out; buyers and subscribers often complain that this practice decreases the artistic value of the photographs for which National Geographic is world-renowned.

Map supplements

Supplementing the articles, the magazine sometimes provides maps of the regions visited.
National Geographic Maps (originally the Cartographic Division) became a division of the National Geographic Society in 1915. The first supplement map, which appeared in the May 1918 issue of the magazine, titled The Western Theatre of War, served as a reference for overseas military personnel and soldier's families alike. On some occasions, the Society's map archives have been used by the United States government in instances where its own cartographic resources were limited. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House map room was filled with National Geographic maps. A National Geographic map of Europe is featured in the displays of the Winston Churchill museum in London showing Churchill's markings at the Yalta Conference where the Allied leaders divided post-war Europe.
In 2001, National Geographic released an eight-CD-ROM set containing all its maps from 1888 to December 2000. Printed versions are also available from NGMapcollection.com.

Language editions

In 1995, National Geographic began publishing in Japanese, its first local language edition. The magazine is now published in 32 language editions around the world, including English on a worldwide basis, Bulgarian, traditional and simplified character Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew and an Orthodox Hebrew edition, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, two Portuguese language editions, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, two Spanish language editions, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish. The 33rd language edition was launched in Lithuania on September 24, 2009. An Arabic-language edition was launched in Abu Dhabi starting October 2010, bringing the number of National Geographic Magazine's foreign-language editions to 34.

Language	Website	Editor-in-chief	First issue
English	www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm	Chris Johns	October 1888
Arabic	ngalarabiya.com	Mohammed Al-Hamady	October 2010
Bulgarian	www.nationalgeographic.bg	Krassimir Drumev	November 2005
Chinese (Mainland China)	ngmchina.com.cn	Ye Nan	July 2007
Chinese (Taiwan)	www.ngm.com.tw	Roger Pan	January 2001
Croatian	www.nationalgeographic.com.hr	Hrvoje Prćić	November 2003
Czech	www.national-geographic.cz	Tomáš Tureček	October 2002
Danish	www.nationalgeographic.dk	Karen Gunn	September 2000
Dutch (Netherlands/Belgium)	www.nationalgeographic.nl	Aart Aarsbergen	October 2000
Finnish	www.nationalgeographic-suomi.com	Karen Gunn	January 2001
French	www.nationalgeographic.fr	François Marot	October 1999
German	www.nationalgeographic.de	Erwin Brunner	October 1999
Greek	www.nationalgeographic.gr	Maria Atmatzidou	October 1998
Hungarian	www.geographic.hu	Tamás Schlosser	March 2003
Hebrew		Daphne Raz	June 1998 (Orthodox Hebrew edition: April 2007)
Indonesian	www.nationalgeographic.co.id	Yunas Santhani Azis	March 2005
Italian	www.nationalgeographic.it	Guglielmo Pepe	February 1998
Japanese	www.nationalgeographic.jp	Hiroyuki Fujita	April 1995
Korean (South Korea)	www.nationalgeographic.co.kr	Kay Wang	January 2000
Lithuanian	www.nationalgeographic.lt	Frederikas Jansonas	October 2009
Norwegian	www.nationalgeographic.no	Karen Gunn	September 2000
Polish	www.nationalgeographic.pl	Martyna Wojciechowska	October 1999
Portuguese (Brazil)	nationalgeographic.abril.com.br	Matthew Shirts	May 2000
Portuguese (Portugal)	www.nationalgeographic.pt	Gonçalo Pereira	April 2001
Romanian	www.national-geographic.ro	Cristian Lascu	May 2003
Russian	www.national-geographic.ru	Andrei Doubrovski	October 2003
Serbian	www.nationalgeographic-srbija.com	Igor Rill	November 2006
Slovene	www.nationalgeographic.si	Marija Javornik	April 2006
Spanish (Latin America)	http://natgeo.televisa.com	Omar Lopez	November 1997
Spanish (Spain)	www.nationalgeographic.com.es	Josep Cabello	October 1997
Swedish	www.nationalgeographic.se	Karen Gunn	September 2000
Thai	www.ngthai.com	Kowit Phadungruangkij	August 2001
Turkish	www.nationalgeographic.com.tr	Nesibe Bat	May 2001

In April 2005, an Indonesian edition launched, published by Gramedia Majalah. A Bulgarian edition of the magazine published by a Sanoma Publishing joint venture launched in November, 2005 and a Slovenian edition published by Rokus launched in May, 2006. In association with Trends Publications in Beijing and IDG Asia, National Geographic has been authorized for "copyright cooperation" in China to publish the yellow border magazine, which launched with the July 2007 issue of the magazine with an event in Beijing on July 10, 2007 and another event on December 6, 2007 in Beijing also celebrating the 29th anniversary of normalization of U.S.–China relations featuring former President Jimmy Carter. A Serbian edition of National Geographic was launched with the November 2006 issue in partnership with a joint venture of Sanoma and Gruner + Jahr. A Hebrew edition has recently launched in Israel.
In contrast to the United States, where membership in the National Geographic Society was until recently the only way to receive the magazine, the worldwide editions are sold on newsstands in addition to regular subscriptions. In several countries, such as Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Turkey, National Geographic paved the way for a subscription model in addition to traditional newsstand sales.

Huaxia Geographic

The Mainland Chinese edition (CNY20.00) features a few articles written in Chinese, and the original translated text is truncated or even deleted. So the Taiwanese Chinese edition is also sold in China, with a relatively high price (labelled CNY50.00, but generally sold CNY38.00).


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