National Geographic began as a dry journal for just 165 members
The first issue, in September 1888, went to 165 charter members and contained no photographs to speak of. Then, in January 1905, the editors ran several full-page pictures of Tibet. Within three years more than half the magazine's pages were photographs, and a yellow-bordered icon was on its way.
The National Geographic Society was founded in 1888, and its magazine followed within the year as a scholarly journal. In that debut issue Gardiner Greene Hubbard explained that the society meant to spread geographic knowledge and saw a magazine as one way to do it. The switch to pictures transformed it into a popular title, and colour photographs appeared from the 1910s. One of its most famous images came much later: Steve McCurry's June 1985 cover portrait of Sharbat Gula, a twelve-year-old Afghan girl.
Its look is unmistakable, thick, square-bound and glossy inside a yellow rectangle, with map supplements for subscribers. Features cover geography, history, nature, science and world cultures. During the Cold War the magazine pledged to present balanced portraits of countries behind the Iron Curtain, and it later became outspoken about the environment. By 2015 it had collected 25 National Magazine Awards. The brand spread well beyond print: television specials began on CBS in 1965 and moved through several networks, and a children's edition launched in 1975.
Circulation tells a story of boom and contraction. At the late-1980s peak the magazine had 12 million US subscribers plus millions abroad. By 1995 it appeared in nearly forty local-language editions with at least 6.5 million copies a month worldwide. In 2010 it reached around 40 million readers monthly. By mid-2024 combined circulation had fallen to about 1.65 million, though its children's magazines sold roughly 500,000.
Ownership and audience have shifted with the times. The society owned the magazine outright until 2015, when National Geographic Partners took controlling interest. In 2023 all staff writers were laid off and US newsstand sales were scheduled to end the next year. Meanwhile its Instagram account had 280 million followers by November 2024, the third largest of any account not run by an individual celebrity.
Source: National Geographic
