{"id":90832,"date":"2019-02-01T14:20:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=90832"},"modified":"2022-08-18T12:51:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T19:51:24","slug":"why-national-geographic-is-optimistic-about-geography","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/why-national-geographic-is-optimistic-about-geography","title":{"rendered":"Why National Geographic Is Optimistic About Geography"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1041,171,91],"tags":[841,55412,271,1531,321],"arcnews_issues":[79122],"class_list":["post-90832","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaboration","category-education","category-mapping","tag-climate-impact","tag-growth-insights","tag-mapping","tag-national-geographic","tag-parks","arcnews_issues-summer-2017","arcnews_sections-news"],"acf":{"short_description":"When I was an undergrad at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying journalism, I ended up taking a class in Chinese history.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"When I was an undergrad at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying journalism, I ended up taking a class in Chinese history. It was an elective, something different and seemingly unrelated to my journalism major. The course gave me a perspective I never had before: an appreciation for a culture and geography that I recognized only from the pages of the\u00a0National Geographic<\/em>\u00a0magazines I devoured as a kid."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":90852,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The class also changed my life. It influenced my career. Years later, I ended up working in Hong Kong\u2014an opportunity I seized given what I had learned back in school. I then lived in Bangkok and have since traveled extensively around the world. And more than three years ago, I jumped at the chance to join the institution I revered as a child, an organization created to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge: the National Geographic Society.\r\n\r\nOne of our goals at National Geographic is to get the next generation as excited about geography as we are\u2014and always have been.\r\n

National Geographic's Early Days<\/h3>\r\nIn 1888, 33 top scientific and intellectual leaders met in Washington, DC, at the Cosmos Club and formed a society dedicated to understanding \"the world and all that is in it.\" Many of these founders were in their 20s and 30s\u2014the Millennials of their day. They sought funding for exploration and were eager to share what they learned. But without Twitter and Facebook, they instead printed a 50-cent journal with a plain brown cover.\r\n\r\nThat is, until Alexander Graham Bell took over as the Society's president in 1898. Bell was the Steve Jobs of his day\u2014inventor, teacher, and visionary; the original disrupter. It was his decision to make photographs a key feature in the magazine\u2014you could even call it the original Instagram. This caused quite a scandal, and some board members even threatened to resign. But we all know how that turned out!\r\n

National Geographic Today<\/h3>\r\nNational Geographic has grown exponentially since its humble beginnings. Today, it's a broad and expansive organization encompassing media, mission, and education.\r\n\r\nOur brand reach is bigger than ever: 730 million people across the world. The magazine publishes in 33 languages. The channel airs in 172 countries and 43 languages. And National Geographic has the largest noncelebrity Instagram account, with more than 76 million followers\u2014and we won't sleep until we catch up to Kim Kardashian!\r\n\r\nThanks to an expanded relationship with 21st Century Fox, with whom we've partnered on the National Geographic Channel for many years, we now have more resources to invest in exploration and education\u2014including an endowment worth more than $1 billion. National Geographic reinvests 27 percent of its revenue\u2014proceeds from for-profit activities such as the channels, magazines, and travel\u2014into work that allows us to pursue solutions to our greatest challenges.\r\n\r\nWe know these challenges all too well: a warming planet, a growing global population, and a race for resources. This is why supporting science and exploration\u2014and understanding geography\u2014is more important than ever. And yet, our young people lack geographic knowledge.\r\n

Survey Says\u2026<\/h3>\r\nIn the summer of 2016, National Geographic fielded a survey with the Council on Foreign Relations to try to gauge global and geographic literacy among college-aged Americans. The survey results showed that American students have a lack of understanding of the world and their place in it.\r\n\r\nWe found, for example, that\r\n