Target Publication

I picked National Geographic as my target publication. National Geographic reaches a worldwide audience – according to Wikipedia, it is published in over 32 different languages and has a worldwide circulation of nearly 9 million. Since National Geographic’s audience is so broad, the magazine covers a wide variety of stories from areas all over the world. It’s tagline when you visit its website is, “inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888.” It publishes stories about so many different global topics, including the environment and conservation issues, different cultures and groups of people around the world, conflicts between cultures and countries, and new scientific research.

So, since National Geographic’s audience is so wide, I have to choose articles that are applicable to audiences around the world. Also, since the magazine is only released once a month, many of the stories I choose need to be detailed enough to be able to run as a feature story that a reporter might work on for several months before it is published.

The first story I would choose is one I found on NPR about American politics and climate change policy. Since climate change is something that affects the entire world, and since the policies that America puts into place will set an example for other countries, I think this is an important and interesting story to run. It can also easily be expanded upon by going into more detail about other countries’ environmental policies.

The next story I would run would be this one I found on the New York Times about the outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Since the earthquake in Haiti was international news last year, I think this story would resonate with a worldwide audience. To expand on the story, I think National Geographic could look into where all the money and aid that was sent to Haiti after the earthquake went, and why the country is still in such a state of disrepair.

The third story I would choose to run would be this story form BBC News about India and Brazil’s plans to incorporate the economic value of nature into their policies. I think this story is really interesting, because I just read an article for my ecology class that talked about the different reasons people have for wanting to protect the environment. The article did not talk about the economic value of the environment, and I think this is a new and interesting concept that will be interesting to people around the world.

The fourth story is kind of cheating, since National Geographic ran it in its last issue. The issue’s cover story was on the Gulf oil spill, and the magazine offered a couple feature stories on the spill and how it affected the people, environment, animals and the economy of the areas it reached. The articles were really powerful and shed a lot of light on policies in place for the oil companies and what they have done in the past to get around them. The oil spill was a huge environmental disaster and received international coverage, so I think it is something the world needed to know about.

For my fifth story, I would choose to run this article from Time Magazine about the migration of humpback whales. I think this would be a cool short story to run in National Geographic, especially since the National Geographic Channel is premiering the Great Migrations series soon. Actually, I think this month’s National Geographic’s cover story is about migrations, but I haven’t gotten it yet. So maybe the humpback whale is included!