From Kurt Andersen’s New York magazine piece on Lewis Lapham’s retirement:

The frothiest magazine he reads regularly is The New Yorker. He reads nothing at all online.
…
I ask [moneybags publisher Rick] MacArthur how his readers differ from those of The Atlantic and The New Yorker, expecting an answer involving geography, demography, psychography. “Harper’s readers are less interested in conventional wisdom.” Meaning? “[David] Remnick was pro-invasion, The Atlantic was very pro-war.” I ask how the magazine will change post-Lapham. “I’m more of an investigative reporter than Lewis. He’s more interested in turns of phrase and insight. There was a real bias against doing journalism. I’ve changed that mentality.”

Editorial positions on Iraq aside for the moment, aren’t New Yorker readers and Harper’s readers more or less the same people? The Atlantic, too, although maybe slightly less so. I just read the complete current issue of The Atlantic as I was traveling last weekend, because I’m deciding whether to subscribe and it’d been a long time. I was completely captivated by Paul Bloom’s winsomely evenhanded “Is God an Accident?” and, predictably, enjoyed Christopher Hitchens on Lolita, but was repelled by Mark Steyn’s tin-eared, bitchy obituary of Sidney Luft, some of whose facts looked fishy to me. I’ll keep buying the magazine till I make up my mind.

Update: Have now subscribed. Also just re-ordered the daily NYT after a multi-year break. I’ll have to buy some Grist environmental indulgences for all those pretty, doomed trees.