Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/11/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]re: Donal comments about National Geographic....... Seems to be slightly off-topic, but since one person at NGS still uses Leicas and since many of its old pictures were with Leicas, perhaps not. The information about Geographic and assignments and subscription base is a bit off. Geographic is cutting budgets right and left, and has fired nearly half the staff it had in 1991. Along with others, I used to do year-long assignments. They were more typical for big stories than stories than ran only to moneths. Several of the assignments I did over 28 years took more than a year to complete. Now the assignments are running more often from a low of 2-3 weeks to 6 weeks. Subscription base was NEVER anywhere near 15 million. At its high, when the coup occurred in 1991 and the firings started (reducing the world s greatest photography staff to two photographers), the highest paid subscription base was 10.8 million. After all the misery, today it is under 9 million. One of the fired managers called me recently to say that 35 years ago, when he started working at Geographic, the Society had 30 staff and contract photographers, and 2 vice presidents. That morning, he noted, the Society had 2 staff photographers, and 40 vice presidents !!! Think about all the Leicas their salaries could buy. Fred Ward