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Tax-exempt foundation that owns Harper's Magazine
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Created by the MacArthur Foundation established by billionaire John D. MacArthur
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Headed by Rick MacArthur, Publisher of Harper's Magazine, grandson of late John D. MacArthur
Harper's Magazine Foundation owns Harper's Magazine, the website Harpers.org, and Franklin Square Press, which publishes books consisting mostly of writings that have appeared in Harper's Magazine.
In 1980 John "Rick" MacArthur, then 23, along with his father persuaded the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (created by Rick MacArthur's grandfather, John D. MacArthur) and of the Atlantic Richfield Company to create and fund a Harper's Magazine Foundation to acquire and operate the magazine. This new entity acquired Harper's (which was then losing nearly $2 million per year and was on the verge of ceasing publication) for $250,000.
Rick MacArthur maneuvered to take control of this new foundation, did so in 1983, and as Harper's publisher restored fired editor Lewis Lapham. They reshaped the magazine in 1985 into what some have called a liberal "Reader's Digest for intellectuals" with shorter articles and quotable features such as the Harper's Index of odd facts.
In 2004 Harper's claimed a combined circulation of 210,000. The bulk of its readers are middle-aged or older. It remains a media outlet for liberal-left writers such as Nicholas Von Hoffman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Earl Shorris, Jonathan Schell, and longtime book reviewer for the The Nation, John Leonard.
During all but three years since the Foundation acquired it in 1980, the magazine has lost money and depended on Foundation and other outside donations for its survival. The Harper's Magazine Foundation gets much of its money from other tax-exempt foundations. In 2001, for example, the Harper's Magazine Foundation received four "charitable" grants that added up to $3.3 million from the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation of Niles, Illinois.
Known in the non-profit world as "Little Mac," this foundation was established in 1982 by Rick MacArthur's father Roderick, the disinherited only son of billionaire John D. MacArthur, and funded by Roderick's self-made fortune. "Little Mac" today has assets worth somewhere between $19 million and $34 million. The "Little Mac" Foundation Board's Vice-Chairman is Harper's publisher Rick MacArthur, who in May 2004 was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times boasting of the "liberal causes" this Foundation supports, including the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. and the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School that takes "the hard cases … that even the ACLU won't take."
Moreover, between 2001 and 2004 the Harper's Magazine Foundation received over $10.3 million in grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The Harper's Magazine Scholarship named in honor of the late journalist I.F. Stone is endowed not by the Harper's Magazine Foundation, but by the personal fortune of publisher Rick MacArthur "and friends."
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