There are a handful of legendary magazines in the U.S. publishing industry, but maybe none as iconic as National Geographic. Not only has the magazine been around since 1888, but it’s maintained a high level of quality, this year being the 23rd in a row in which the title has been nominated for at least one National Magazine Award. This year it’s nominated for five Ellies, including for general excellence among titles with circulations of 2 million or greater. Its other nods came in the photography, photojournalism, reporting and interactive feature categories. Today, as part of an ongoing series on this year's NMA nominees, Media Life excerpts passages from the two National Geographic pieces that were nominated.

Reporting
One of National Geographic’s nominations is in the reporting category for Peter Hessler’s story “ China’s Instant Cities,” about the country’s numerous factory workers and the makeshift cities they form. It ran in the June 2007 issue. Here’s an excerpt:

Three months after designing the factory, Boss Gao and Boss Wang tested the equipment. Since my first visit, they had poached half a dozen skilled workers from another factory in southern China, and an assembly line had been installed. The 50-foot-long (15 meters) machine lurked sullenly in the corner room, six tons of steel painted sea green.

The thing rumbled when the head technician threw the switch. Gas burners hummed beneath blue flames; a stainless steel belt lurched forward. The digital console tracked the rising temperature: 200 degrees Celsius (390°F), 300 degrees (570°F), 400 (750°F). It hit 474 (885°F), then dropped. They needed to reach 500 (930°F) before production could begin.

“Maybe it’s because it’s colder here than in Guangdong,” the technician said. His name was Luo Shouyun, but everybody called him Mechanic Luo. He put on a pair of fireproof gloves and tried to open the door to one of the machine’s ovens. But the handle melted off in his hand; he dropped it, cursing. The red-hot piece of metal lay on the floor, hissing like an angry snake.

“Mei shir,” Boss Wang said. “No problem.”

Mechanic Luo fiddled with the control box. He theorized that the natural gas canisters might be too cold. The men adjusted the valves and began to rock the massive metal tubes. The temperature didn't rise. They shook the tubes harder; nothing happened. Somebody went to get a stepladder and boiling water.

Boss Gao looked even more skittish than usual; he'd never installed such a big assembly line. More than a decade ago, he had started his first workshop in the outskirts of Wenzhou. With his parents and two sisters, he produced the fabric that lines the waist of cheap trousers. Initially, profits were 50 percent, and the workshop steadily expanded. But the neighborhood became home to more than 20 other companies making trouser lining, and the margins dropped until Boss Gao finally quit. “It used to be that you’d try to find a product that nobody else was making,” he explained. “But now everything is already being made by somebody in China.”

Photojournalism
The other of National Geographic’s nominations for writing is in the photojournalism category for Michael Finkel’s story called “Bedlam in the Blood: Malaria,” about the disease that’s affecting more people than it ever has before. Here’s an excerpt from the piece, which originally ran in the July 2007 issue:

To witness the full force of malaria’s stranglehold on Zambia, it’s essential to leave the capital city, Lusaka. Drive north, across the verdant plains, past the banana plantations and the copper mines—copper is Zambia's primary export—and into the forested region tucked between the borders of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is the North-Western Province. It is almost entirely rural; many villages can be reached only by thin footpaths worn into the beet-red soil. A nationwide health survey in 2005 concluded that for every thousand children under age five living in the North-Western Province, there were 1,353 cases of malaria. An annual rate of more than 100 percent seems impossible, a typo. It is not. What it means is that many children are infected with malaria more than once a year.

In the North-Western Province, competent medical help can be difficult to find. For families living in the remote northern part of the province, across more than a thousand square miles of wild terrain, there is only one place that can ensure a reasonable chance of survival when severe malaria strikes a child: Kalene Mission Hospital. This modest health center, in a decaying brick building capped with a rusty tin roof, represents the front line in the conflict between malaria and man. Scientists at the world's high-tech labs ponder the secrets of the parasite; aid agencies solicit donations; pharmaceutical companies organize drug trials. But it is Kalene hospital—which functions with precisely one microscope, two registered nurses, occasional electricity from a diesel generator, and sometimes a doctor, sometimes not (though always with a good stock of antimalarial medicines)—that copes with malaria's victims.

Every year for a century, since Christian missionaries founded the hospital in 1906, the coming of the rainy season has marked the start of a desperate pilgrimage. Clouds gather; downpours erupt; mosquitoes hatch; malaria surges. There’s no time to lose. Parents bundle up their sick children and make their way to Kalene hospital.

They come mostly on foot. Some walk for days. They follow trails across borders, into rivers, through brushwood. When they reach the hospital, each child's name is printed on a card and filed in a worn wooden box at the nurses' station. Florence, Elijah, Ashili. They come through the heat and the rain and the dead dark of the cloudy night. Purity, Watson, Miniva. Some unconscious, some screaming, some locked in seizure. Nelson, Japhious, Kukena. A few families with bicycles, Chinese-made one-speeds, the father at the pedals, the mother on the seat, the child propped between. Delifia, Fideli, Sylvester. They fill up every bed in the children's ward, and they fill up the floor, and they fill up the courtyard. Methyline, Milton, Christine. They pour out of the bush, exhausted and dirty and panicked. They come to the hospital. And the battle for survival begins.