- Publishers Noted: in which our publisher reviews the building of another publisher
The office television of Harper’s Magazine has been dethroned. The day I visited a person from Verizon had unplugged and replaced the set, a 1989 NEC model CT-2770S, with a flatscreen TV. The old television now sat, ignominiously, on the ground at the foot of the television table. It was one of the first things my tour guide, assistant editor Becky Zhang, took me to see when I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon in October.
The staff’s appetite for steampunk technology does not stop with the erstwhile television. Everyone has a landline at their desk. Whenever a writer files a draft, the managing editor prints out copies and puts them out on a rack near his door, where editors collect them to mark up by hand. The office has at least two fax machines. One of them belongs to the publisher’s assistant, Virginia Navarro, who in fact has her fax number (but not, to her consternation, her email) printed on her business card. She told me a few writers still file by…
