National Geographic Society sets biggest layoff in its history

Obviously discoverability, and advertising of these is less than ideal. A lot of it is actually verging on overextending to the brand, like "The Dog Lover's Guide to Travel" just doesn't seem a good brand expansion.

Or it could be a, "Look, this isn't a very well-run business, there's a lot of redundancy, and a lot of investment in prestige initiatives that don't bring in a lot of revenue, so let's trim things down and focus on higher-margin operations, and then see how we can leverage the brand across the rest of the organization".

I mean, both of my scenarios are effectively very similar, one just assumes malice, the other good corporate stewardship. It's hard to know.

I find it far easier to believe that News Corp, as a publicly traded company, wants to increase its own equity value by allocating capital well. And that the executives who work there have shown skill at identifying big-brand media companies who have been mismanaged and are in terminal decline, and purchasing them for a price which makes it easy to streamline the operation, cut dead wood and make a profit on the transaction.

The alternative is that the name and brand dissappears below the waterline forever and becomes something that people used to talk about.

The department that obviously didn't help you craft your question...

How so? Maybe it's "stability" in the sense that NatGeo will continue to be a going concern for the foreseeable future? What sense would it make to buy a struggling business and make no changes?

I think so.

I have Fox Business on every morning to get caught up with the financial news. Some of the things that are said, or the characters that are produced as pundits...it's astonishing. Their agenda is so blatant. Watch the station for 15 minutes and you'll likely ask, "How do people take this seriously?" In fact, it's so obvious that I still watch the channel, because it adds an element of humour when all I'm looking for is data.

The left, on the other hand, does it in a far more intelligent, subtle way. And I think it fools a lot of people. Look in this very thread at how many people picked up on the fact that the "first thing cut" was the fact-checking department. That may or may not be true, but we don't know from this article.

The total value of the system is on the order of $18 trillion dollars, slightly more than the ~$15 trillion annual GDP. https://www.ici.org/pressroom/news/ret_10_q4

Too, employees have far more at stake, and far less negotiating power, than employees, a fact quite openly recognised in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (Book 1, Chapter 8: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...)

There's further a great deal of other infrastructure which reinforces the existing system, from tax and other laws based on employer-provided benefits (including substantial advantages to both employers and employees participating in such plans), and of the services industries built around these (it's far more economical, and actuarially defensible, to deal with groups of people, particularly large aggregates, than one-on-one).

Which means that:

1. You cannot simply turn this ship on a dime. It's quite literally larger than the economy.

2. Changes to present employee benefits represents a material change in compensation and risk profile to those employees, for which they're poorly equipped to either address or organise against.

While I have a similar sentiment regarding the fact that employers should get out of the business of retirement, life insurance, medical, etc., that's the way it's been for the older generation. Phase it out, don't just cut everyone over and cut benefits in one moment.

Same with Social security, for that matter.

On the plus side, your future pension is not dependent on the success of your employer, a much larger crisis (as in Greece now) is required before your retirement is in danger.

On the minus side, it's dependent on the success and long-term planning of the country, and any kind of early retirement may be impossible/harshly penalized.

Personally I would prefer to handle it on my own, but on the whole I really appreciate that everyone is guaranteed a stable and healthy retirement.

If idiots are left in charge of them, then yes, they're a bad idea. But that sort of applies to everything.

I, for one, will deal with some idiocy to guarantee a safe and secure retirement. I have neither the time, energy, nor expertise to actively manage my retirement funds. So that's my trade-off.

Calling a 401(k) a replacement for pensions is disingenuous. They're ridiculously cheaper for employers and provide a much, much less valuable return for employees. Regardless of who is in charge, the switch has nothing to do with the people managing them and only to do with saving the company money.

It's not about catching up & competing, it's about dragging them down to our level!

That's what scares me to death. I've spent my entire working life scrimping and saving. I haven't had the fun lifestyles, the swanky apartments or the fancy cars that many others I've personally known have had. As a result, I have accumulated a sizable sum. Meanwhile, I personally know people a few years younger than me with zero savings, not even cash, who literally live paycheque to paycheque, despite making roughly what I make.

When they are no longer able to work, the only possible thing will be for the State to rob that nest egg I've been accumulating and sacrificing for, in order to finance their retirements. Whether it's tax-deferred or tax-exempt, I know that I am going to lose the vast majority of that money. It'd be inhuman to let them starve on the street, and so my own dwindling years will be impoverished.

I should have just lived high on the hog like everyone else.

Your inane snark about "the 1%" aside (whom, by definition, own the big bucket of money. Not exactly a revelation), I agree that the lack of money that most people have saved for retirement is going to be a disaster. It's equally bad up here in Canada.

Is it just me or does this mentality totally forget that the airwaves were public and we gave the companies access to them in exchange for a public service (which started out as nightly prime-time news.)

The airwaves belong to us, and if the corporations are so enamoured by pure monetary/viewership gains, and have forgotten the original edict and goals, not to mention potential uses for good of such widespread communications, we need to remove their right to the airwaves and bring them back under the public sphere.

Our population is being dumbed down by the media, while it could be doing the opposite.

I'll say it again, the airwaves should belong to the public.

"The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000 employees in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch."

I have read it cover-to-cover every time. I've thought it getting more pro-oil pro-banking, actually, so that just shows how subjective these things are.

I'm a brit abroad and I wish it had a more science, nature, anthropology and everything else slant. Last months article on the new missing link finds was really interesting, but I won't miss all the American-centric stories one iota.