A Serious Shift in Readers’ Interests

Of all the unexpected events since Sept. 11, one of the more unexpected has been the resurgence of America’s serious, general interest magazines. Less than a decade ago, savvy media analysts routinely questioned not only the relevance, but also the longevity of the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and the New Yorker. They were dinosaurs, quaint artifacts of the unwired universe, of the dead epoch that began with movable type and involved such plodding occupations as reading.

Today, circulation at all three publications is up and--more important--under editors Michael Kelly and Cullen Murphy of the Atlantic, Lewis Lapham of Harper’s and David Remnick of the New Yorker, the journalism, commentary and cultural criticism in all three have taken on a renewed confidence, vigor and immediacy.

None of this surprises the San Francisco-born Lapham, whose long tenure at Harper’s makes him the most senior of the group. He and his colleagues, Lapham said in an interview this week, are responding to a seismic shift in American culture that began Sept. 11, 2001. “Our readers’ appetites are fundamentally different now,” he said. “When everyone is feeling that the only important thing in life is the next Lexus and worship CEOs as demigods, there is little appetite for ideas or good writing, which is what our magazines are about. But the fact remains that you can get more out of good writing than you can from a 500-channel television universe that inevitably dissolves into incoherence. Writing involves thought and creates coherence, which is an appealing commodity in this atmosphere of concern.

“When the trade towers went down and the economy went south,” Lapham said, “people realized that their sense of entitlement to security was an illusion and their presumed prosperity the product of manipulation. In this atmosphere, intelligent writing becomes a comfort. I think it is interesting that the new appetite for good thinking and writing has been accompanied by a rising interest in history. You can see that on the bestseller lists and, even, in the History Channel’s increased ratings.”

History is something that always is on Lapham’s mind, and it informs his other vocation as one of America’s foremost essayists. Since Sept. 11, he has devoted his monthly essay in Harper’s to an ongoing critical appraisal of the Bush administration’s response to events. Those pieces have been collected in a single volume, “Theater of War” (The New Press; $22.95).

As an essayist, Lapham is a leading practitioner of the style that might be called American baroque--a school that includes Gore Vidal and the late Murray Kempton: The syntax is formal, even ornate; historical and cultural allusions are frequent and erudite; the politics are both left-wing and populist; the undercurrent is irony and the sensibility might be termed American high tory.

Something of Lapham’s flavor is captured in this passage from the essay, “Res Publica:”

“As was proved by events on the morning of Sept. 11, the laissez-faire theories of government do us an injustice. They don’t speak to the best of our character; neither do they express the cherished ideal embodied in the history of a courageous people. What joins the Americans one to another is not a common nationality, race or ancestry but their voluntary pledge to a shared work of both the moral and political imagination. My love of country follows from my love of its freedoms, not from pride in its armies or its fleets, and I admire the institutions of American government as useful and well-made tools (on the order of a plow, an ax, or a surveyor’s plumb line) meant to support the liberties of the people, not the ambitions of the state. The Constitution serves as the premise for a narrative rather than as the design for a monument or a plan for an invasion.

“Any argument about the direction of the American future becomes an argument between the past and the present tense. Let us hope that it proves to be both angry and fierce.... “

The impediment to such an argument, in Lapham’s view, is Americans’ historic reluctance “to avail themselves of free expression. De Tocqueville took note of our extreme aversion to saying anything that will make people squirm. We are a fair-minded people, but unwilling to give offense. It’s not really timidity, but a kind of politeness.”

Lapham feels no such inhibition when it comes to the Bush administration whose “policy on these defining questions, is incoherent, filled with contradictions. I think Californians have been quicker to pick up on that than people in other parts of the country. When it comes to Iraq, for example, they are inclined to ask such impermissible questions as, ‘What has Saddam Hussein actually done to us?’

“Harper’s largest circulation is in California,” Lapham said, “but from our inception in the 1850s, ours has been a magazine aimed at the country as a whole. Most of our 11 editors have come from the West. As a result, the bias implicit in our magazine for 150 years has been, ‘What are those scoundrels up to in Washington and New York?’ There is, in particular, an entirely proper suspicion of the government in Washington, which I--for one--can only hope will spread.”

L.A.’s Shrinking Alternative Press

Born of the of the 1960s’ protest politics, America’s alternative press is increasingly a youth-oriented appendage of the entertainment media with a lucrative foot in the sex trade’s advertising. Across the country, alternative weeklies essentially have been concentrated into two chains:

New York-based Village Voice Media surrounds its lifestyle and entertainment reporting with a thinning veneer of earnestly reported progressive journalism focused mainly on local politics, civil rights, feminism and the labor movement.

The larger chain, Phoenix-based New Times, wraps its entertainment coverage in a kind of mouthy contrarian journalism with an infusion of populist and libertarian attitudes and occasional investigations.

But, month by month, the news focus of most publications in both chains takes on a softer and softer hue.

So, now that Village Voice Media’s LA Weekly has cornered Southern California’s alternative press niche by paying New Times to close its Los Angeles paper, what does the chain’s management intend?

“First of all,” said Voice Chief Executive David Schneiderman, “we’ll be trying to absorb as many of New Times’ advertising dollars as we can get.” In fact, by late morning Wednesday--the day New Times Los Angeles closed down--telephone calls to the shuttered papers’ advertising number were being automatically forwarded to the Weekly.

According to Schneiderman, the decision to buy its rival out of the Los Angeles market also was driven, in part, by an anxiety over the long-term intentions of Chicago-based Tribune Co., which publishes The Times.

In an interview Wednesday, Schneiderman pointed to what he said was Tribune’s interest in establishing an entertainment-oriented Chicago publication designed to appeal to the young readers habitually drawn to free alternative weeklies. If that strategy were to be extended to Los Angeles, Schneiderman said, it would threaten the Weekly’s lucrative local franchise, which sources say produces profit of more than 20%. (As a privately held company, Village Voice Media does not publish such figures).

“In Southern California,” Schneiderman said, “we intend to compete with the Los Angeles Times because, if we don’t, we think Tribune will come in and compete with us for our young readers. The Times is a journalistic behemoth with lots of advertising dollars. But we have a desirable young readership, and we think this deal positions us to get some of that money.”