BOC week 3: Rolling Stone Magazine

Rolling Stone Magazine was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason in San Francisco. They started the magazine with only $7500 that they got from friends and family and in two years became the most respected rock and roll publication that had ever existed. Rolling Stone magazine’s editorial history includes a long line of now famous and successful photographers, writers and artists. Before Rolling Stone magazine there was no such thing as rock music photography. Barron Woman served as the first Rolling Stone staff photographer; Linda Eastman (later Linda McCartney) was the first woman photographer to shoot a Rolling Stone magazine cover; Annie Leibovitz served as the second staff photographer and Robert Kingsbury was the magazine’s first full-time art director. Rolling Stone magazine was the starting place for many famous writers including Hunter S. Thompson, Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus and many more. (http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/A-Brief-History-of-Rolling-Stone-Magazine/189320) By 1990, the magazine was a glossy, mass-produced entertainment package and Wenner was worth an estimated $250 million. (http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/books/book256.html ) Rolling Stone is not remotely the same magazine today, but some of the influence of its glory days remains: The line from Hunter Thompson's quintessentially '60s stories (the infamous Fear and Loathing series) to the hip contemporary reportage of, say, Maureen Dowd in The New York Times is a fairly straight one. (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,317558,00.html) Rolling Stone’s audience and target market has always been music-lovers of all ages and those that just want to be in the know when it comes to the music industry. The magazine has created a sense of community with it’s readers with its extensive web site offering even more insight into all things music and blogs from its famous writers. They have also created many products around the Rolling Stone brand, including the most popular line of T-shirts that were available at Macy’s and then at Wal-Mart for a small period of time. With each shirt purchased, the customer would receive a free one-year subscription to the magazine. The magazine is still a highly respected publication, maybe not as much so as it once was, but certainly attracts more popularity than it’s New Yorker, Billboard, and Nylon magazine competitors when it comes to music, celebrities, and fashion. Wenner used his magazine to reward his friends and pan his enemies, and there was always an element of censorship: The magazine trod very softly around the music industry, where its advertising revenues lay. Wenner was shameless about using the magazine's growing clout as his entree to the rich and famous. Even Wenner's original insight — that rock & roll deserved to be taken seriously — eventually became stale. Thus perhaps the real mystery about Rolling Stone is not that it didn't fulfill its potential but just the opposite: that for five years, it was so breathtaking. For whatever reason — and it is the one thing that Draper can never really explain — Wenner chose, as a conscious business strategy, to allow the magazine to reach its potential for a brief, shining moment. Instead of longing and regret, maybe we should simply be happy that we got that much. It's more than most magazines can say. (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,317558,00.html)