The Walkout Continues

If Willie Morris had looked back when he resigned as Harper's editor (TIME, March 15), he would have found he was leading a parade. Last week six more Harper's editors decided to follow him out. They acted after a frequently bitter and fruitless confrontation with Harper's Chairman John Cowles Jr. One who resigned, Contributing Editor David Halberstam, said of the meeting: "Either we were speaking in Chinese and he was listening in English, or we were speaking in English and he was listening in Chinese."

Even without translation, Cowles did spell out some of the owners' dissatisfaction in a statement he read to begin the meeting. While the magazine was losing money over the past few years, he said, Harper's nevertheless "dramatically increased" Morris' editorial and promotional budgets, hoping to gain in newsstand sales and subscription renewal rates. Neither hope was fulfilled. "The magazine as presently constituted cannot live only on favorable press notices and dinner party conversation," Cowles said. He also insisted that Harper's content be guided more by reader surveys--an idea Morris refused even to discuss and which the resigning editors found equally unpalatable. Cowles, pointing out that Harper's is, in effect, being kept afloat by the parent Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co., even hinted he might pull the plug in preference to "indefinitely" subsidizing the magazine. Publicly, Cowles said that he has "every intention" of continuing publication of Harper's.

The editors, who had hoped to get from Cowles a pledge to keep Harper's as it is and to play a major role in the choice of a new editor (their choice: Managing Editor Robert Kotlowitz), were frustrated on both counts. Along with Kotlowitz and Halberstam, Contributing Editors Marshall Frady, John Corry, Larry King and John Hollander resigned. They left behind two major questions: Who would the new editor be and what mandate would he have?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.