A number of publishers have indeed been drawn back to glossy pages and the smell of ink. “It is the joy of being at an intimate, nice dinner, where the table is well set, and six or seven people are having an informed and elegant conversation, instead of being in a gym with 10,000 people yelling,” said Tyler Brûlé, the publisher of the international culture magazine Monocle, which makes about 70 percent of its money from print.

A magazine, Mr. Brûlé said, is a contemplative experience, perhaps best enjoyed in physical form, untethered from the need to charge batteries. It is also a label, he said, to be displayed proudly, like designer luggage.

Mr. MacArthur, who is half French and writes books and columns in the language, cites two French publications, the magazine XXI (pronounced “vingt et un”) and a newspaper, Le Canard Enchaîné, as resolutely anti-web success stories. Closer to home, web-centric publications like the music review site Pitchfork and the marketing company Contently have produced beautiful journals, seeking the gravitas of print.

Image A 1876 copy of Harper's. Credit... Richard Perry/The New York Times

Many competitors of Harper’s, like The New Yorker, have settled on a middle ground. They have paywalls but offer some free articles, on the grounds that being part of the national conversation offers some long-term value. Mr. MacArthur is unmoved. His writers are “aggressively discouraged,” in his words, from publishing about their work elsewhere on the Internet.

His thesis is built on three pillars. The web is bad for writers, he said, who are too exhausted by the pace of an endless news cycle to write poised, reflective stories and who are paid peanuts if they do. It’s bad for publishers, who have lost advertising revenue to Google and Facebook and will never make enough from a free model to sustain great writing. And it’s bad for readers, who cannot absorb information well on devices that buzz, flash and generally distract.

He does not want to explore many of the new revenue streams favored by other publishers — like Monocle, which has stores and a radio station. He will not let advertisers sponsor a section of the magazine, let alone place native ads, for fear that it will look as if they own Harper’s. He does not want conferences or to make videos. “A magazine should be a magazine,” he said. “A newspaper should be a newspaper.”