ZIGGING AND ZAGGING AT HARPER'S

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100620001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 25, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 23, 1978
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

ONPIGE
Z ,grog and Zagging at Harper's
Under Editor Lapham, consistency is a hobgoblin banished.
n the small world of opinion magazines,
creed is usually constant. Rarely are
readers surprised by where the New Re-
public, for instance, National Review,
Commentary or Atlantic comes down on
a given issue. Harper's is something else.
The 128-year-old monthly has changed
editors three times since 1967, creating a
slight zigzag effect. Now the magazine
once known for its cheerful progressivism
appears to have taken a tendentious turn
to the right.
Consider, as evidence, the January is-
sue. The cover piece, by California Re-
publican Senator S.I. Hayakawa, attacks
Congress's free-spending ways and de-
scribes the benefits Hayakawa believes
make voluntary unemployment increas-
ingly attractive. Another article argues for
a pure merit system and against the af-
firmative-action position in the Allan
Bakke case before the U.S. Supreme
Court. December's lead piece attacked the
environmentalists in their long-running
dispute with Consolidated Edison over lo-
cation of a power plant in the Hudson
River Valley. The November cover fea-
tured National Review Editor and Yale-
man William F. Buckley Jr.'s latest quar-
rel with his alma mater, over its insistence
on presenting "all sides" of "any issue."
In his monthly "Easy Chair" columns
and longer articles, Harper's Editor Lewis
H. Lapham also frequently takes a
conservative tilt. Lapham bridles, for ex-
ample, at the all-out conservationist posi-
tion in the energy debate. "People want
what they want," he maintains, "and they
will pay whatever prices they must, and
so it is no use [for the Government] to
tell them what's good for them." Lapham
inveighs bitterly against a variety of ad-
versaries and attitudes, including the em-
pire building of major cultural institu-
tions. He has no quarrel with readers who
complain that his magazine often dwells,
in classic conservative fashion, on "the
imperfectibility of man and the failure of
his.grand designs."
While the change in tone was not
made for box-office reasons, it does
serve to distinguish Harper's from its chief
and more liberal rival, the Atlantic. None-
theless, Harper's continues to print lib-
eral and even left-wing authors. One of
Lapham's convictions is that the U.S.
system requires not only debate but also
intellectual confrontation: "Democracy
means that you and I must fight. Democ-
racy means a kind of Darwinism for
ideas." Though he wants to preserve
"what is best in our traditions," he insists
that he is not at all conservative "in the
Republican board-room senA3proved F
In fact he has no firm ideology, shows
little respect for authorities secular or spir-
itual, and regularly knocks the rich. He
is a cantankerous example of that feisty
species, the "aginner," a challenger of
whatever is fashionable at the moment,
particularly in the Boston-New York-
Washington communications axis. Says
he. "If I come into a room and find ev-
eryone in agreement on something, I'll
try to think of an opposite view." He de-
Lapham In his New York headquarters
Dwelling on the imperfectibility of man,
li ghts in the constant rediscovery that the
emperor, just about any emperor of any
realm, has no clothes. Laphain feels no
obligation to suggest a new outfit; to pro-
claim nakedness is enough. One former
Harper's senior editor admires the lively
controversies Lapham stirs up, but ques-
tions his constant use of what he calls
"scorn and nihilistic raillery."
Naturally Lapham sees no virtue in
constancy of content. Between 1972 and
early 1974, before it became modish to
dump on the CIA, Lapham promoted sev-
eral articles critical of it. In 1976 he or-
dered a positive piece on the CIA's record,
and has now commissioned Pro-Commu-
nist Journalist Wilfred Burchett to review
Decent Interval, the new book attacking
the agency by former Cu Analyst Frank
Snepp. During Spiro Agnew's final
months in office, when the Vice President
was under attack from all sides, Harper's
sought (but could not find) a cogent arti-
cle defending him. Before and after the
election, Lapham raked Carter repeated-
r13Rawsoerd t08d83 hOJ -
issue titled "Deadly Virtue;' the editor
takes the stance that since Carter was
elected "to redeem the country," it is un-
reasonable to expect him merely to govern
it. Now Lapham is shopping for an author
who wants to stick up for the President.
At 43, Lapham could pass for a uni-
versity don. His suit and tie somewhat
out of sync, he has the somber look of a
man who reads too many problematic
manuscripts. Born to affluence (his grand-
father ran a shipping line and served as
mayor of San Francisco; his father left
shipping for banking), he went to Hotch-
kiss, Yale and then Cambridge with the
ambition of becoming a historian.
But instead of taking a Ph.D., Lap-
ham opted for daily newspaper work (at
the San Francisco Examiner and then
at the late New York Herald Tribune).
Finding conventional reporting too con-'
fining, he quit in 1962 and worked as a
staffer and a freelance for a number of
magazines, including Harper's. When Ed-
itor Willie Morris quit in 1971 because
of a dispute with the publisher, and most
of the Harper's staff resigned in sym
pathy, Lapham came on full time "I
became an editor by default and mistake"
-and served in the second slot under
the new boss, Robert Shnayerson. Lap-
ham gradually assumed more power as
Shnayerson became increasingly involved
in spin-off ventures. In June 1975 La
ham got the title of editor, and the fol-
lowing January, when Shnayerson re-
signed, took full control.
s it had under Morris and Shnayerson,
Harper 's under Lapham is losing
money. Circulation is now 304,000, down
25,000 since 1975, but increases in sub- I
scription rates and in advertising volume
during the second half of 1977 have re-A
duced the magazine's deficit. "We're get- .
ting there," says Publisher James Alcott.
"We're almost in the black." - -
John Cowles Jr., chairman of the Min-
neapolis Star and Tribune; Harper's par-;
ent company, takes no part in editorial
decisions and says that he is happy with
Lapham's stewardship. Cowles believes
that Lapham has restored the style and
tone the magazine had under John Fisch-
er, who ran it for 14 years before Morris
took over. It is again a journal of strong es-
says, with one person making most of the
selections, rather than the more collegial
operation that existed under'Morris and
Shnayerson.
Semiretired and living in Connecticut,_ -
Fischer, 67, is a Lapham fan. "Lewis' po-
litical views are more conservative than
mine, and he has a more pessimistic view
of the world," says Fischer, "but on ed.
itorial matters we think alike. He has
made the magazine more controversial
and more cohesive. I do wish that he could
get a little more humor in." Small chance;
to Lapham, naked. emperors are no laugh-
Ih b-60100620001-6 . ^