A Senior Citizen Succumbs

Harper's, the nation's oldest monthly, to close at age 130

Probably no magazine in the world was ever so popular or so profitable.

That was the way an envious competitor described Harper's at the start of the Civil War. Since then, however, it has rarely been popular or profitable. Founded by four brothers in New York City, Harper's has spent most of its 130 years awash in red ink, losing $1.3 million annually since 1977. Last week America's oldest monthly received its long-feared death notice. Said Otto Silha, chairman of the parent Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co.: "It was no longer desirable for the company to support its operation in the light of increased costs of such items as paper and postage."

Harper's (circ. 325,000) had been on the block for nearly a year. Religious and other special-interest groups made inquiries but were turned away as unsuitable owners; other prospective buyers were unwilling to absorb the maga zine's hefty operating losses and its liability of $3 million in prepaid subscriptions. Editor Lewis H. Lapham and two partners failed in a last-hour rescue attempt.

During its illustrious history, Harper's published the writing of Dickens, Trollope and Twain. In the late 1960s, Editor Willie Morris, a Mississippian who earned his spurs at the Texas Observer, signed up a bunch of literary gunslingers -- Norman Mailer, David Halberstam, Larry King -- to give the magazine what one critic called "sophistication with a whoop." Morris and his gang walked out in 1971 when Harper's absentee owners objected to that new direction.

Robert Shnayerson, a former TIME senior editor, succeeded Morris, adding earnest stories on the environment and a section called "Tools for Living," a kind of survival guide for the bean-sprout generation. Dizzied by the Morris zig and the Shnayerson zag, droves of readers and advertisers drifted away. In 1976, a year after Lapham took over, only 23% of subscribers renewed. (The rate is back up to 50%, but advertising has not grown apace.) Along with the Atlantic Monthly and Saturday Review, both of which have changed hands in the past few months, Harper's has been hurt by the rise of less serious, more narrowly focused periodicals. Says Lapham:

"Twenty years ago we could have run articles on anything from toy railroads to wild boars to American politics. Now every one of these subjects has a magazine of its own."

Lapham, 45, a cerebral ex-newspaperman from San Francisco, tried to retrain Harper's eye on important public issues, setting the tone with a crotchety column of his own. The magazine was proudly provocative, billing itself "the battlefield of the mind." Some readers found it overly contentious and occasionally stale. The cover story for the August--and final--issue, for example, is on television evangelism, a worthy topic but one long since worked over by other magazines. Still, Harper's is a voice that will be missed. As Lapham says, "Its closing chips a little away from one's freedom to say what one damn well pleases."

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