The very thought of a Rupert Murdoch-owned company buying 73% of National Geographic makes my blood run cold. Then I read the news more closely, and I learn that what’s happening is that the media brands are being folded into something called National Geographic Partners, which

will include National Geographic’s domestic and international channels, National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Kids and Little Kids magazines, travel media, National Geographic Studios, National Geographic Maps, National Geographic Books and Home Entertainment, travel expeditions, licensing and merchandising, eCommerce, National Geographic Creative, and location-based entertainment, as well as related digital and social media platforms.

Not, you notice, the National Geographic Society, which is the science arm of the organization.

I feel better. For a long time we were members of the Society and received that glorious yellow-trimmed magazine every month. Then, like many others, we stopped subscribing (“subscriptions to its magazine have declined from a peak of 10.8 million in 1989 to about 4 million today”). But my history with the Society goes back to the early 1960s when Mom and I would bus down to Constitution Hall in Washington DC to see multiple presentations by the likes of Jacques Cousteau and Louis Leakey, among others. The NGS put these “film lectures” on for years at the Hall, until it built its own theater elsewhere in DC.

Anyway, as long as Murdoch’s greasy hands can be kept away from the scientific projects the Society funds, I don’t have a problem with this.