WordPerfect still in use at Harper's

From the NYT:

When John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s Magazine and a zealous promoter of the virtues of print journalism, sits down at his desk to write, he has three options — a typewriter, an ancient beige PC and a modern Apple desktop computer. 

To correspond with literary friends like William T. Vollmann and Robert A. Caro, who enjoy the feel of thick paper and embossed type, he chooses the typewriter, bought at Tytell on Fulton Street in Manhattan decades ago. 

He composes articles on the PC, loaded with WordPerfect software because he feels Microsoft Word argues with him. He saves them on a 3.5-inch floppy disk. 

Only for email, a modern necessity that contrasts with the wood-and-leather bookishness of his corner office overlooking Broadway in Greenwich Village, does he turn to the Mac.

MacArthur does not google stuff either:

On several occasions during a recent interview, he could not quite remember a fact that supported a point. His version of searching for it on Google was yelling to a staff member, who hurried to deliver the information.

I am not totally unsympathetic to MacArthur's uneasiness with the new writing and reading technologies. I still do most of my writing with a pen and a piece of paper. Like MacArthur, I print out articles to read, at least when they are long or I think they deserve my full attention. I do not like e-books. However, I cannot live anymore without Evernote, my feed reader and my subscriptions to online newspapers and magazines.

Above all, I try not to mix my personal idiosyncrasies with an objective evaluation of the benefits of the web for the readers. Most of them are not like me. Reading can be a contemplative experience, which probably needs isolation, silence, and paper. But other forms of reading, quicker and less contemplative, have value. Real lovers of books and writing should be happy to see people try to read a novel on their Kindle in the metro, instead of playing some stupid videogame on their cell phone.

MacArthur's opinion is different:

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.

One can easily answer that: a) if a writer is not disciplined enough to reserve time without distractions for her work she is not a good writer; b) the free model is only one of the models available to publishers; c) MacArthur underestimates the power of interesting facts and good writing.