Confession: I used to be a Harper's magazine subscriber

This NY Times article about the fiscal and personnel turmoil at Harper's manages to avoid the elephant in the room: the magazine is just not that good anymore. Back in the late 90s-early 00s, you could count on Harper's for in-depth reporting or long-form essays on a variety of topics. For example in late 2000, before the poker craze hit, the magazine ran a great article by James McManus about the World Series of Poker. Another time I recall an expose on the sugar industry and how they stick sweet stuff into everything.

The downturn came – unsurprisingly given Lewis Lapham's politics – around the election of George W. Bush. Political commentary had always been a part of Harper's but now it turned into a full-blown case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Every cover story, every sidebar, every commentary was a full-blown whine, criticism, and kvetch. Some, maybe all of it was justified, but who wants to read the same thing over and over? It's a shame, really, but emotion ran ahead of reason and now Harper's is circling the drain.

And oh, 'tis true. I read the magazine, cover-to-cover, each month, not because I necessarily agreed with what it had to say to me, but because it never failed to provoke me, to make me think.

And then . . .

It simply stopped doing that, and became Lewis Lapham's private preserve into which his poisonous views could be poured, month-after-month, without concern for opposing views, without apparently considering that the magazine had been turned into a turn-off.

And so . . .

I simply stopped reading it.

Stopped subscribing or buying it.

Obviously, I was not alone.

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