Today on the Menu: National Geographic’s Janelle Nanos

National Geographic has long been a favorite publication of mine, and in recent years, it’s become a must-watch channel as well. This is due mostly to the fact that the world is almost always a mega-interesting place. One of NatGeo’s niche publications, National Geographic Traveler, is written by one Janelle Nanos. Here’s her other her site.

This morning, Janelle told us about NatGeo’s efforts to interact with users; like a photo submission contest called World in Focus. You can get one of your photos printed on the cover of the magazine, which is kinda neato.

In the news we discuss whether or not Twitter can make money. IAC’s Barry Diller says NO! My take: hell yeah, but not by itself. It’s a medium, just like newsprint and radio waves and cable cables. Just imagine if printing were free &#151 that’s basically what Twitter is. We three agreed.

Then we gabbed about the idea that plagiarism is sometimes subconscious! I, in fact, admitted to probably having used some idea I heard somewhere else in a story and not properly attributing it &#151 as did Janelle. Jason Boog, my cohost, conveniently lost his phone connection during this part of the show. OK so neither Janelle nor I have plagiarized in the true sense of the word, but this article explains why sometimes we all might do this to varying degrees.