Thursday, January 19, 2017

Geography Mistakes Make Me Nuts! - UPDATE

I was going to title this "Geography Nazi Strikes Again", but I didn't want to offend anyone. So I am going with "Geography Mistakes Make Me Nuts, particular in National Geographic Magazine".

I received my issue of National Geographic Traveler (Feb . March 2017) in the mail and was pleasantly scanning the issue in the "library", when I discovered a STUPID error. Now, I don't want to blame Fox News Corp for stupidity, although it did just happen after they bought National Geographic.  And, perhaps, they believe that just saying something makes it so, but they are wrong!

First the lovely picture...


Now the last line of the caption
Corey Arnold captured Yosemite Falls, Half Dome, Glacier Point and one very daring visitor, all in a single shot.

Mr. Arnold may well have done that in some shot. But this isn't that shot.  In this shot, Yosemite Falls would be to the extreme left of the picture across the valley floor.


The falls he did capture were the low flow of two other famous falls. Nevada Falls (arrow in red in the picture detail) and Vernal Falls (arrow in orange on picture).

I wouldn't be so offended if it wasn't National GEOGRAPHIC.  Good grief, hire a fact-checker.

UPDATE
Later on the same day I posted this and wrote a note to the Magazine, I received a charming response from National Geographic Traveler. I appreciated it very much.  Here it is:

Dear Scott:

Thanks for your note. Heather and Meg are my colleagues and forwarded it to me.

What a stupid error. I am very sorry we made it. Today we all met on the editorial team to discuss how this happened. A breakdown that involved swapping images without thoughtfully (or accurately) updating text is one of the errors we identified. And it's really too bad, because there is a lot to say about the image we selected.

Can we hire you as a clean reader before we ship off to press next time? We do our very best with each issue to be accurate, inspiring and smart about our travel coverage. The most inspiring thing about our work is that readers really care and notice. So I'm sorry we let you down here, but we all value your close read and support of our magazine.

I hope this year brings you great adventures and...accurate experiences!

Best, George Fischer