What Happened to Harpers?

What happened to the once venerable Harper's Magazine, a publication that has refused many of the enticements of modern publishing by remaining a non-profit, refusing to offer a real foray into the world of sports, Hollywood or popular culture and resisting many now ubiquitous conventions, like inset ads and an open website. And this model, while losing money for several years, kept the magazine as one of the top in America. Great writers continued to contribute, they were among the best at covering politics, education in America, literature and the kind of arcana that the New Yorker and even the Atlantic started to increasingly elide. And then in an odd move two years ago, publisher John MacArthur fired popular editor Roger Hodge, replacing him with long-time managing editor Ellen Rosenbush (New York Times). And ever since the magazine has floundered at the level of content, at least to me. I have been reading Harpers on and off for over twenty years and have always enjoyed the voice, the tone and the content. They take on big ideas and big issues with incisive, lengthy articles surrounded by their always interesting opening essay, quirky "readings" selections and excellent book reviews. Yet somehow every month for well over a year, I look at the cover and realize I have no interest in the main stories. And the opening essay, which ranged from discussing the German economy to language to the War on Terror, was suddenly given to Thomas Frank, who I like but who tends to write about a small subset of themes from only slightly varied perspectives.There is still the occassionally interesting article, but it is just not the magazine I loved for years.


Unfortunately, this has become a trend. While the New Yorker continues to impress, at least to me, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Newsweek and a number of other top magazines have all seen a decline in quality in recent years, as financial constraints and problems push them to move more to the marketability over intellectual quality. As I said, the New Yorker has been able to make that transition, under Nina Brown and now Remnick, but I believe so many others have failed to maintain the quality as they try to stay alive. This is particularly true in the Newspaper business, with quality publications like the LA Times and Washington Post showing a measurable decline in critical reporting over the past several years. We can even see it in the incredibly slim new Vanity Fair, which continues to nicely mix more serious fair with their celebration of the rich and famous and celebrity, and even magazines like Sports Illustrated that once actually had articles of four to five pages. The notion that Americans can't concentrate on anything for more than 10 minutes is then self-fulfilling if believed, as publications adjust to the perceive communal ADHD. What is the cost? In my estimation, this is yet another example of the new anti-intellectualism that reigns in America today, which limits our ability to see outside the constricting contours of the world as scripted by the power elites. Luckily the internet provides alternative voices, though it too is often conforming to the notion that short and sweet is always better.