Last fall, Harper’s publisher and CEO John R. MacArthur promoted Christopher Cox, then serving as deputy editor of the 165-year-old literary and political magazine, to editor-in-chief. But this past Friday, less than three months into Cox’s tenure, MacArthur abruptly changed his mind. “I can confirm that I have been terminated from Harper’s Magazine because of editorial differences with the publisher,” Cox wrote in an email to Gawker on Tuesday. “I’m not prepared to say more than that at this time.”

John "Rick" Macarthur is a rich man who is the publisher of Harper's Magazine, a very good magazine that pays employees poorly and does not make money. John MacArthur hates the internet. Like a stopped clock, even John MacArthur is sometimes unintentionally right.

Christian Lorentzen was hired by the New York Observer as senior editor last week. Before that, he was a senior editor at Harper's Magazine. But we hear he lost his last job following a sexual harassment incident.

• How many people have signed up for Newsday.com since the newspaper put up a pay wall three months ago? A grand total of 35, believe it or not. [NYO]
• Following in Oprah's footsteps, Martha Stewart announced she's moving her syndicated TV show to cable (the Hallmark Channel) next fall. [Reuters, WSJ]
• NBC honcho Jeff Gaspin says he "underestimated the level of emotion" that would follow the decision to change up NBC's late-night schedule. Fortunately, the Olympics are here, which he says will be "a cleansing moment." [NYT, AP]
• Ratings are up at Fox News: The network was ranked No. 1 in primetime cable last week. Strangely, Fox News was also ranked "the most trusted name in news," according to a national survey released today. Seriously. [NYT, PD]
• There's lots of anxiety in the air over at CNN, not surprisingly. [Politico]
• Yet another Post staffer is suing the paper for discrimination. [Gawker]
• Roger Hodge, the editor of Harper's, has been let go. [NYT]
• More than 83 million people tuned in on Friday for the Haiti telethon. [LAT]
• Who's going to replace Simon Cowell on AI? Possibly one of these guys. [NYM]
• Nancy Grace loves cameras in courtrooms. Except when she's the one doing the testifying, in which case they can cause "embarrassment." [AP]

Harper's Magazine is a wordy, smart magazine for self-satisfied liberals. Harper's Bazaar is a glossy fashion magazine. But according to the publisher of Harper's, it's a constant battle to make sure people don't confuse the two.

♦ The Emmy Awards will take place on Sunday evening; AMC's Mad Men is the "overwhelming favorite" to win for best drama series. [Reuters]
♦ What's happening with the New York Sun, which said it will shut down on September 29th without additional funding? It's a "very fluid situation," according to Ira Stoll. [Portfolio]
♦ Tina Fey's SNL imitation of Sarah Palin earned NBC its most-watched web clip in history. [THR]
♦ According to a new research study, Survivor is the most addictive show on TV. [NYP]
♦ MSNBC is expanding to India and Indonesia, among other places. [THR]
♦ The founders of Dreamworks have sealed their pact India's Reliance, a deal that will provide them with $1.2 billion to set up a new film company. [WSJ]

Harper's has made available online eleven essays by David Foster Wallace following the postmodern writer's suicide last week. Bloggers have rounded up other DFW work available online, including his Times profile of Roger Federer and 2000 Rolling Stone profile of John McCain. There are also videos, including the writer's appearances on Charlie Rose (other) and these moments collected by the LA Times. All told, the world is left with a reasonably extensive sampling of the writer's work available at the click of a mouse — at least enough to draw in new readers and perhaps even convince them to attempt his daunting masterpiece, Infinite Jest. [via Daring Fireball, Wonkette, LA Times]

Lewis Lapham's forthcoming Harper's column on Tim Russert is not entirely unexpected, given the cranky literary liberal's public pronouncements on the late host of Meet The Press. But Lapham, sometimes slammed as insufferable bore, has spun a compelling essay out of his rough initial pronouncement that "1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government." Maybe Lapham's thorough disassembling is so tasty this time around because the reverence for Russert (not to mention his son Luke) was so completely over the top: two days and three nights of televised memorial, or some 96 hours of airtime, by Lapham's count. Lapham's column is called "Elegy For A Rubber Stamp," entertains the concession that Russert was probably a good father and friend and Catholic, and then swifty moves on to saying Russert had "the on-air persona of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter," that his "stock in trade was the deftly pulled punch" and that Russert was a "pet canary." Further excerpts after the jump.

Harper's Magazine has this to report: Google's motto may be "Don't be evil," but the profitmongers in fact are evil. Why? Google's plan to build a massive datacenter complex in Oregon "has triggered an arms race" that has lead Microsoft and Yahoo to build their own gargantuan server farms. These server farms, Harper's warns, will combine to draw more than "90 megawatts of electricity — more than the World Trade Center humming at peak power on a hot summer day." For this reason, Harper's opines, Google's "motto is perhaps due for an addendum: 'Lead others not into temptation.'" Oh, that's what happened with the WTC. I always wondered.

A review of the cover story in the September Harper's: "I'd love to be able to summarize the 11-page piece for you, but given the author's penchant for language like 'wielding bathymetry collected by its petroleum directorate' I'll have to give up, and say that Mr. (or Ms.??) Mr. Funk's previous article in Harper's, 'I was a Chinese Internet Addict' sounds like a lot more fun." [MediaPost]