Naked without its cover photo

National Geographic is legendary for having the greatest photography in the world. (As editor in chief, Chris Johns’ job is to sift through the thousands of spectacular photographs he sees each month and choose the one that best tells the story for the cover. But instead, he punted [“When 1,000 Words Isn’t Enough,” by DeNeen L. Brown, Aug. 24].

Rather than doing his job, he copped out and put a six-word headline on the cover, and, for the first time since 1959, no photo. By doing so, he did his readers a disservice.

Africa is no doubt a huge place, as diverse as it is massive. Readers don’t expect a single photo to tell its story any more than they expect a single image to tell the story of, say, Asia. Or even Cleveland.

A single photograph might not have told the entire story, but it certainly would have told more of the story than six words of text.

Choosing the cover photo can be difficult. But the boss gets paid to make the tough decisions. Johns, a photographer who covered Africa for 17 years, should have done better by his readers than to throw up his hands and say the choice was too hard.

JOHN ROSENTHAL

Santa Monica