Short Takes

HARPER'S FINDS A HEAD

Ever since Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham, 46, announced his resignation last month, the troubled 131-year-old monthly (circ: 336,000) has been engaged in an intense head-hunting expedition. Last week the search committee, headed by Rutgers English Professor Richard Poirier, chose Lapham's replacement: Michael Kinsley, 30, Harvard graduate, lawyer and an editor since 1976 of the New Republic (circ. 97,000). Says Harper's Publisher David Michaels: "He is young, and he was the one person we saw who seemed to present any solid opinion about what we should do for the magazine." Among the others considered: Esquire Editor Byron Dobell; Author and former Esquire Editor Harold Hayes; Atlantic Washington Editor James Fallows; LIFE Editor Jon Larsen. Some of these more experienced heads may have shied away from the daunting task of edging the journal back from the brink of extinction. Just last year, Harper's announced it was folding, then was rescued at the eleventh hour through the combined efforts of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Atlantic Richfield Foundation. The magazine's saviors have so far pumped in an estimated $3 million, but its prospects remain clouded. Kinsley, who will take charge of the journal with next January's issue, confesses he has "a lot of little ideas, but no grand scheme." Still, he made the right impression: "I convinced them I was going to make it scintillating and profitable."

END OF THE EARTH DIARY

In May of 1979, with loud optimism about the American reader and the American dollar, German publishers Gruner & Jahr introduced Geo magazine, a pricey ($4 per issue), richly produced journal aimed at luring young, up-scale readers away from National Geographic (circ. 10 million). Instead, Geo's diffuse, often pretentious photojournalistic essays drove many readers away; circulation reached only 256,000, short of the planned 300,000. A promotion campaign dubbing it The Earth Diary seemed a futile echo of the '60s. Last week, after losing about $30 million--plus three publishers and three managing editors--Gruner & Jahr sold their ad-starved, troubled magazine to Knapp Communications (Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit). In exchange, Gruner & Jahr promised to help test-market Knapp's other magazines in Europe. Predicts President Cleon Knapp, who quickly named former New West Executive T. Swift Lockhard as Geo's fifth publisher: "We're not going to report on the sordid part of our world We're going to celebrate it." Also on his mind: drop The Earth Diary subtitle and lower that forbidding newsstand price.

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