Geographic article on North Dakota stirs uproar

The January issue of National Geographic magazine included a Charles Bowden feature on North Dakota called "The Emptied Prairie." North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven did not like it one bit, and he was not the only North Dakotan taking issue with the story. Hoeven wrote a letter to the magazine's editor-in-chief, Chris Johns, calling the feature "way off the mark," reports The Bismarck Tribune.

The feature paints a bleak picture of life on the plains (along with photos such as the one above by Eugene Richards). "That’s the rub in rural North Dakota, a sense of things ebbing, of churches being abandoned, schools shutting down, towns becoming ruins," Bowden writes. "And all this decline exists amid a seeming statistical prosperity: Oil is booming, wheat prices are at record highs, and, as the average farm size grows, the land is studded with paper millionaires living in the lonely sweep of the plains, with surrounding community gone to the wind."

Hoeven's letter accentuates the positive in his state, and he points to the success of ethanol and biodiesel facilities as well as rural businesses. "To give the magazine's readers a more accurate picture of our state, I've asked our Commerce Commissioner and Tourism Director to contact your editors and invite you back to cover what you left out -- the fact that North Dakota is a growing 21st century state with a bright future," he writes. (Read more)

Johns defended the article in an interview with The Associated Press this week. "Why did we focus on North Dakota? Because there are some trends there that spoke to us and I love North Dakota," Johns told the AP. Johns said the story was inspired by some of his drives through North Dakota while he was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. (Read more)

The Tribune has spent plenty of ink on the story, including a column by Editor John Irby, a column by Clay Jenkinson and plenty of letters to the editor agreeing and disagreeing with the magazine article. The (Fargo) Forum weighed in with a editorial called, "Geographic look at N.D. is old news." "Beautiful photographs and excellent descriptive writing make for a compelling, if woefully incomplete, image of rural North Dakota in 2008," the editorial board writes. (Read more)