What Sections and Content Types Can Readers Find on Smithsonian Magazine’s Website?

Smithsonian Magazine’s site is organized around a news feed plus subject channels, with separate entry points for features, popular stories, special reports, multimedia, and newsletters. If you want a quick read, start with Smart News; if you want a specific subject, use History, Science, Innovation, Arts & Culture, or Travel; if you want deeper or themed reading, look at Latest Features, Most Popular, and Special Report.

Main content sections

The site’s navigation lists these core sections:

The homepage also groups content under Latest Features, Most Popular, and Special Report, and includes a themed collection labeled America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark.

What the content looks like in practice

The site mixes daily news with longer features. A Smart News item on the homepage, for example, reports that a farmer in Egypt found a pink stone and called authorities, leading to the remains of two colossal statues of Ramses II, including a head that might have measured nearly 28 feet tall. Other homepage items cover a French city hall fire described as a “catastrophe for heritage,” a Japanese space mission to collect samples from Mars’s moons, and a 19th-century Scottish landowner’s controversial wall.

Features and subject stories go deeper: one article examines how a group of teachers created a vacation approach; another looks at how dam removals are bringing fish back across the northeastern United States; another explains how Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on a real Scottish surgeon.

Multimedia and other entry points

Beyond articles, the site’s navigation and homepage reference Newsletters, a Photo Contest, Podcast, and Videos. These are separate ways to browse or receive content rather than subject channels.

How to find what you want

• For current, short reads: open Smart News.
• For a subject: choose History, Science, Innovation, Arts & Culture, or Travel.
• For editor-selected or popular reading: use Latest Features or Most Popular.
• For themed coverage: check Special Report and collections such as America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark.
• For search: use the site’s Search entry.
• For ongoing updates: use Newsletters.

The homepage also displays publication times and dates on story cards, which helps distinguish fresh news from older features. Subscription and membership prompts appear on the site, but the available page evidence does not establish which articles are restricted or what access costs.