Harper's Magazine, 666 Broadway, New York NY 10012, Tel: 212-614-6500,
Fax: 212-228-5889. $18/year (12 issues).
Harper's was founded in 1850, and in the late 1980s had a circulation
of 182,000. It is designed for political liberals who claim some cultural
assets, whose inherited wealth can afford the occasional indignation over
corruption in high places. Editor Lewis H. Lapham seems to lack focus; he
knows America is going to hell, but literate hand-wringing is preferred over
investigative reporting. Publisher and president John R. MacArthur actually
has some journalism experience, and recently wrote an investigative book
titled "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War" (Hill and
Wang, 1992). Elsewhere MacArthur bemoans the docility of 1980s journalism:
"Along with many of my friends and contemporaries who entered the reporting
trade in the mid- to late-1970s with a sense of missionary zeal, I was
brusquely awakened in the Reagan era to an atmosphere of caution, self-
censorship and aggressive government intimidation..." (In These Times,
August 1989).
One might take MacArthur at his word but for the fact that unlikely
magazines such as Vanity Fair and New Yorker are beginning to publish
important investigative pieces, while Harper's just wimps along. John R.
MacArthur is from the family behind the J.Roderick MacArthur Foundation,
which gave money to progressive causes during the 1980s.
Extract the names from this source
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