 Cover of the December 2024 issue | |
| Editor | Christopher Carroll |
|---|---|
| President | John R. MacArthur |
| Categories | Art,culture,literature |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Total circulation (2018) | 104,882 |
| First issue | June 1850; 174 years ago (1850-06) (asHarper's New Monthly Magazine) New York City |
| Company | Harper's Magazine Foundation |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | 666Broadway,New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Language | English |
| Website | harpers |
| ISSN | 0017-789X |
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched inNew York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States.[a]Harper's Magazine has won 22National Magazine Awards.[1]
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine published works of prominent authors and political figures, includingHerman Melville,Woodrow Wilson, andWinston Churchill.Willie Morris's resignation as editor in 1971 was considered a major event, and many other employees of the magazine resigned with him. The magazine has developed into the 21st century, adding several blogs. It is related under the same publisher toHarper's Bazaar magazine, focused on fashion, and several other "Harper's" titles but each publication is independently produced.
According to a 2012Pew Research Center study,Harper's Magazine, along withThe Atlantic, andThe New Yorker, ranked highest incollege-educated readership among major American media outlets.[2]
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Harper's Magazine began asHarper's New Monthly Magazine inNew York City in June 1850, by publisherHarper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazinesHarper's Weekly andHarper's Bazaar, and grew to becomeHarperCollins. The first press run ofHarper's Magazine included 7,500 copies and sold out almost immediately. Six months later, the magazine's circulation had grown to 50,000.[3]
The early issues reprinted material pirated from English authors such asCharles Dickens,William Makepeace Thackeray, and theBrontë sisters.[4] The magazine soon was publishing the work of American artists and writers, and in time commentary by the likes ofWinston Churchill andWoodrow Wilson. Portions of Herman Melville's novelMoby-Dick were first published in the October 1851 issue ofHarper's under the title, "The Town-Ho's Story", named after Chapter 54 ofMoby-Dick.[5]
In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company, becoming Harper & Row (nowHarperCollins). In 1965, the magazine was separately incorporated, and became a division of theMinneapolis Star and Tribune Company, owned by theCowles Media Company.
In the 1970s,Harper's Magazine publishedSeymour Hersh's reporting of theMy Lai Massacre by United States forces in Vietnam. In 1971, editorWillie Morris resigned under pressure from ownerJohn Cowles Jr., prompting resignations from many of the magazine's star contributors and staffers, includingNorman Mailer,David Halberstam,Robert Kotlowitz,Marshall Frady, andLarry L. King:
Morris's departure jolted the literary world. Mailer,William Styron,Gay Talese,Bill Moyers, andTom Wicker declared that they would boycott Harper's as long as the Cowles family owned it, and the four staff writers hired by Morris—Frady among them—resigned in solidarity with him.
Robert Shnayerson, a senior editor atTime magazine, was hired to replace Morris asHarper's ninth editor, serving in that position from 1971 until 1976.[7][8]
Lewis H. Lapham served as managing editor from 1976 until 1981, when the job was taken over byMichael Kinsley.[9] Lapham returned to the position again from 1983 until 2006. On June 17, 1980, the Star Tribune announced it would cease publishingHarper's Magazine after the August 1980 issue, but on July 9, 1980,John R. MacArthur (who goes by the name Rick) and his father, Roderick, obtained pledges from the directorial boards of theJohn D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, theAtlantic Richfield Company, and CEORobert Orville Anderson to amass the $1.5 million needed to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation. It now publishes the magazine.[10][11][12]
In 1984, Lapham and MacArthur, now publisher and president of the foundation, respectively, along with new executive editorMichael Pollan, redesignedHarper's and introduced the "Harper's Index" with statistics arranged for, "Readings", and the "Annotation" departments to complement its fiction, essays, reportage, and reviews.
Under the Lapham and MacArthur's leadership,Harper's Magazine continued publishing literary fiction byJohn Updike,George Saunders, and others. Politically,Harper's has been a vocal critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policies. Editor Lapham's monthly "Notebook" columns have lambasted theClinton and theGeorge W. Bush administrations. Beginning in 2003, the magazine concentrated on reporting about theIraq War, including long articles on thebattle for Fallujah, and the cronyism of theAmerican reconstruction of Iraq. Other reporting has covered abortion issues, cloning, and global warming.[13]
In 2007,Harper's added theNo Comment blog by attorneyScott Horton about legal controversies,Central Asian politics, andGerman studies. In April 2006,Harper's began publishing theWashington Babylon blog on its website,[14] written byWashington, D.C. editorKen Silverstein about American politics; and in 2008,Harper's added theSentences blog by contributing editorWyatt Mason, about literature andbelles lettres. Since that time, these two blogs have ceased publication. Another website feature, featuring a rotating set of authors, is the "Weekly Review", a three-paragraph distillation of the week's political, scientific, and bizarre news. Like "Harper's Index" and "Findings" in the print edition of the magazine, "Weekly Review" items are typically arranged for ironic contrast.
As of the December 2019 issue, Julian Lucas writes the print edition's "New Books" column.
In September 1970, the magazine featured on its cover "Homo/Hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity,"[15] an essay written byJoseph Epstein, who expressed his negative views of homosexuality and compared it to being "condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men." He also wrote: “If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth. I would do so because I think it brings infinitely more pain than pleasure to those who are forced to live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment; and because, wholly selfishly, I find myself completely incapable of coming to terms with it….” In response, theGay Activists Alliance (GAA) submitted three articles whichHarper’s refused to consider. GAA then planned azap for October 27, 1970, which was covered byABC-TV andWNEW-TV, and led to a three-part series on gay liberation byWOR-TV. When GAA memberArthur Evans confronted editorMidge Decter for publishing the essay, she denied that there was any anti-gay prejudice (Decter later contributed her own homophobic writing, “The Boys on the Beach,” to her husbandNorman Podhoretz’s conservative magazineCommentary, which promptedGore Vidal's “Some Jews & The Gays”[16]).Merle Miller, a former editor atHarper’s, in the wake of "Homo/Hetero," came out publicly and wrote his own article, now considered a landmark of American journalism, “What It Means to Be a Homosexual” published in theNew York Times Sunday Magazine on January 17, 1971. “I am sick and tired,” he said of the article, “of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends.”[17][18]
EditorLewis H. Lapham was criticized for his reportage of the2004 Republican National Convention, which had yet to occur, in his essay "Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History", published in the September 2004 issue, which implied that he had attended the convention. He apologized in a note.[19][20] Lapham left two years later, after 28 years asHarper's editor-in-chief, and launchedLapham's Quarterly.
The August 2004 issue contained a photo essay by noted photojournalistPeter Turnley, who was hired to do a series of photo essays for the magazine. The eight-page spread in August 2004 showed images of death, grieving, and funerals from both sides of thewar in Afghanistan. On the U.S. side, Turnley visited the funeral of an Oklahoma National Guard member, Spc. Kyle Brinlee, 21, who was killed when his vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device (IED) inAfghanistan. During his funeral, Turnley photographed the open casket as it lay in the back of the high school auditorium where the funeral was held to accommodate 1,200 mourners, and the photo was used in the photo essay. Brinlee's family subsequently sued the magazine in federal court. The case ended in 2007 when theU.S. Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized publication was in "poor taste" but upheld the ruling of theTenth Circuit that the magazine had not violated the privacy rights of the family, since the family had invited the press and, according the court, "opened up the funeral scene to the public eye".[21]
The March 2006 issue included an article byCelia Farber, "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science", presentingPeter Duesberg'stheory that HIV does not cause AIDS.[22][23] It was strongly criticized by AIDS activists,[24] scientists and physicians,[25] theColumbia Journalism Review,[26] and others as inaccurate and promoting a scientifically discredited theory.[27] TheTreatment Action Campaign, a South African organization working for greater popular access to HIV treatments, posted a response by eight researchers documenting more than 50 errors in the article.[28]
In 2006, Lapham was succeeded asHarper's editor byRoger Hodge.[29] Since that time, the magazine has had a number of shorter-termed editors in chief, several of whom were fired amid various controversies.[29] On January 25, 2010, the firing of the magazine's editor, Roger Hodge, by publisher John R. MacArthur was met with criticism among the magazine's subscribers and staff.[30][31][32] MacArthur initially claimed Hodge was stepping down for "personal reasons", but later disclosed that he fired Hodge.[33]
Ellen Rosenbush served as editor from 2010 to 2015. She returned in January 2016 when MacArthur fired Christopher Cox, who had been named editor only three months prior in October 2015.[29][34]
James Marcus assumed the post of editor in 2016.[29] In March 2018, an essay byKatie Roiphe on the#MeToo movement excited controversy both online and insideHarper's. Marcus had complained about the piece, suggesting the critique of #MeToo was inappropriate in light ofHarper's "longtime reputation as a gentleman's smoking club"; he attributed this disagreement as a primary cause of his firing in 2018.[29] In April 2018, Ellen Rosenbush assumed the title of editorial director. In October 2019, the magazine announced that novelist and essayist Christopher Beha would be taking over as editor, with Rosenbush remaining as editor-at-large.[35]
In July 2020,Harper's published anopen letter called "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" criticizing "illiberalism" and promoting a tolerance of different viewpoints. The letter received a mixed response onTwitter with some remarking that the prominent signatories had "bigger platforms and more resources than most other humans" and were unlikely to face repercussions for anything they said, and others taking umbrage at particular signatories such asJ. K. Rowling, who faced recent criticism forher comments on transgender issues.[36][37]
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