And my title is being polite. Most of their content is sourced from online content mills, which range from legit services to some paying offshore writers as little as $10 to $25 per quickly written article (mill writers output half a dozen of these stories per day). Some are using AI generated text (perhaps most of them).

January 5, 2024:

National Geographic laid off its staff in June of 2023 – six months ago. This is not contemporary news.

The story is sourced to content mill “Savvy Dime”.

The writer has no useful online biographical information – just vague descriptions. A freelance writer has to market themselves to get work – but these have no contact information. That is a clue this may be a content mill, the author description may be fake, or someone else entirely.

Lauren appears on this page:

About Us – Home Knowledge

Which has the markings of content mill. Note the mostly vague author bios. These same names typically appear on multiple content mill web sites. Some I tracked down are using photos taken from other people’s LinkedIn profile pages, some from Instagram, and some are AI generated. (I have not reviewed this specific set of photos, although some I recognize from other sites that I did review).

Most of the same “authors” appear on this page too: About us – TravelFiber

And here: Meet Our Writers – Past Chronicles

And here: About Us – History All Day

And many more. You get the idea. These are content mills generating creative click bait stories. Even ones that are six months old.