National Geographic Has No More Staff Writers; Hate Crime Skyrockets in the State–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: June 29, 2023

Indy Digest: June 29, 2023

In this space on Monday, I wrote about the ongoing media-layoffs crisis … and news broke about yet another set of layoffs yesterday.

This one really hurts. The Washington Post explains:

Like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geographic magazine has been on a relentlessly downward path, struggling for vibrancy in an increasingly unforgiving ecosystem.

On Wednesday, the Washington-based magazine that has surveyed science and the natural world for 135 years reached another difficult passage when it laid off all of its last remaining staff writers.

The cutback—the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co.—involves some 19 editorial staffers in all, who were notified in April that these terminations were coming. Article assignments will henceforth be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors. The cuts also eliminated the magazine’s small audio department.

The layoffs were the second over the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015. In September, Disney removed six top editors in an extraordinary reorganization of the magazine’s editorial operations.

And herein lies the problem with corporate-owned media: The only value most corporate bean-counters see in media sources is the amount of money they bring in. That’s why someone at Disney decided that the remaining staff writers at National Geographic had to go. So what if it’s one of the most beloved, iconic and popular publications there’s ever been?

It’s not like Disney is exactly hurting. While some parts of the mega-corporation are in the red—like the streaming division—the company overall last quarter still brought in 93 cents of earnings per share, with $21.82 billion in revenue.

Let me write that out: $21,820,000,000.

How much do you think those 19 remaining editorial staffers were making? Let’s say they’re each making $100,000 a year for the sake of argument. That’s a total $1.9 million a year, or $475,000 a quarter.

$21,820,000,000 – $475,000 = $21,819,525,000. And if anyone is rounding these numbers up or down (which they are), that adjusted number minus the NatGeo salaries becomes … $21,820,000,000

Those salaries were equivalent to a rounding error. But, hey, when it comes to corporations, dollars are all that matter.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Hate crimes are up in California … way, way up. The Los Angeles Times says: “Hate crimes soared in California in 2022, with year-over-year rises recorded in crimes targeting virtually every demographic group, according to a report released Tuesday. All told, there were 2,120 reported hate crimes, a 20.2% jump from the year prior, figures from the California Department of Justice show. Overall, the number of such events has risen 145.7% since 2013. California’s all-time high in reported hate crimes was 2,261 in 2001. State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta attributed the rising numbers to what he characterized as an encirclement of hate.”

• Well, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action today at colleges and universities … and the disagreement between justices got rather heated. CNN reports: “(Clarence) Thomas has previously acknowledged that he made it to Yale Law School because of affirmative action, but he has long criticized such policies. He spoke in personal terms in his concurrence as he put forth his argument against the use of the policies, which he described as ‘rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.’ … A footnote near the end of (Justice Ketanji Brown) Jackson’s dissent went after the concurrence by Thomas, with the liberal justice accusing her colleague of demonstrating ‘an obsession with race consciousness that far outstrips my or UNC’s holistic understanding that race can be a factor that affects applicants’ unique life experiences.’ ‘Justice Thomas ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish, here,’ Jackson wrote. ‘The takeaway is that those who demand that no one think about race (a classic pink-elephant paradox) refuse to see, much less solve for, the elephant in the room—the race-linked disparities that continue to impede achievement of our great Nation’s full potential.’”

• Some good news for the local environment, courtesy of SF Gate: “In a win for conservationists, California lawmakers passed the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, which will permanently protect the iconic trees from displacement, on Tuesday as part of the state budget agreement. … The act prohibits any person from importing, exporting, possessing, selling or taking a western Joshua tree or any part or product of the tree ‘except as provided pursuant to existing law or by paying a specified fee,’ according to its summary. The future for Joshua trees was debated this year as state agencies studied the impact of a changing climate on the species. In March of this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to offer protection for the trees under the Endangered Species Act after conducting two in-depth reviews, stating that they weren’t in enough danger to qualify. Nevertheless, the state’s Fish and Game Commission placed the trees on its list of protected species on an interim basis in 2020, according to Courthouse News Service. In 2022, a state judge refused an attempt by construction and real estate groups to challenge the tree’s status.”

• Lots of people play pickleball these days. And lots of people get hurt playing pickleball—especially older people. CBS News explains: “The explosive growth of the racquet sport in recent years is contributing to higher injury rates and health care costs, particularly among seniors, according to analysts at UBS. They estimate in a report that injuries related to pickleball could cost Americans between $250 million and $500 million in medical costs this year, mostly related to wrist and leg sprains and fractures. The investment bank was prompted to examine the issue after UnitedHealth Group, whose stocks the Wall Street firm covers, said that health care utilization rates have jumped in recent months among Medicare users.”

• Netflix isn’t the only big corporation cracking down on account-sharing. The New York Times says: “For friends and relatives of members, there was a well-known hack for scoring Costco’s low prices without paying an annual fee: the self-checkout lanes. Some users found they could borrow a member’s card, or a member’s QR code from the Costco app, and avoid the identification requirements of the regular checkout lanes. That workaround is coming to an end. The company said in an emailed statement on Wednesday that it had noticed that nonmember shoppers had been using other people’s membership cards, which according to Costco policy are nontransferable, in the self-checkout lanes. ‘We are now asking to see their membership card with their photo at our self-service checkout registers,’ the company explained, adding, ‘If their membership card does not have a photo, then we ask for a photo ID.’”

• A new law to curb theft and the sale of counterfeit items online is going into effect. CNBC reports: “The new law requires online marketplaces, such as Amazon and eBay, to verify and share information on third-party sellers that handle a high volume of transactions on their platforms in an effort to deter bad actors from selling stolen or harmful goods. If the companies fail to get in line, they could face more than $50,000 in fines for each violation. … ‘The goal of the INFORM Consumers Act is to add more transparency to online transactions and to deter criminals from acquiring stolen, counterfeit, or unsafe items and selling them through those marketplaces,’ the Federal Trade Commission, which will be tasked with enforcing the law along with state attorneys general, said on its website. … The law comes after trade associations and retailers lobbied Congress about an alarming uptick in retail theft that they say was driven by lax regulations governing third-party sellers and verification processes on online platforms. They claim organized crime groups steal merchandise from stores and then resell it on online marketplaces, typically at a lower amount than the sticker price.”

• And finally … a new law in South Korea just made a whole lot of people younger. Yes, really. Well, technically, at least. Sort of. We’ll let The Associated Press explain: “South Korea’s traditional age-counting custom considers every person 1 year old at birth and adds another year when the calendar hits Jan. 1, meaning a child born on Dec. 31 turns 2 the next day. While the new law is the country’s latest attempt to retire that method and standardize international ages based on the passing of birthdays, it’s not immediately clear what will actually change—putting aside the minor frustrations of children … in waiting for their birthdays. President Yoon Suk Yeol has described standardizing international ages as a key goal of his government, citing a need to reduce ‘social and administrative confusion’ and disputes. But officials in South Korea’s Ministry of Government Legislation acknowledge the new law won’t meaningfully change how the country’s public services are done, as most are already based on international ages.” Got all that?

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