>From a loft in San Francisco in 1967, a 21-year-old named Jann S. Wenner started a magazine that would become the counterculture bible for baby boomers. Rolling Stone defined cool, cultivated literary icons and produced star-making covers that were such coveted real estate they inspired a song.
>But the headwinds buffeting the publishing industry, and some costly strategic missteps, have steadily taken a financial toll on Rolling Stone, and a botched story three years ago about an unproven gang rape at the University of Virginia badly bruised the magazine’s journalistic reputation.
>And so, after a half-century reign that propelled him into the realm of the rock stars and celebrities who graced his covers, Mr. Wenner is putting his company’s controlling stake in Rolling Stone up for sale, relinquishing his hold on a publication he has led since its founding.
>Mr. Wenner had long tried to remain an independent publisher in a business favoring size and breadth. But he acknowledged in an interview last week that the magazine he had nurtured would face a difficult, uncertain future on its own.
>“I love my job, I enjoy it, I’ve enjoyed it for a long time,” said Mr. Wenner, 71. But letting go, he added, was “just the smart thing to do.”
>The sale plans were devised by Mr. Wenner’s 27-year-old son, Gus, who has aggressively pared down the assets of Rolling Stone’s parent company, Wenner Media, in response to financial pressures. The Wenners recently sold the company’s other two magazines, Us Weekly and Men’s Journal. And last year, they sold a 49 percent stake in Rolling Stone to BandLab Technologies, a music technology company based in Singapore.
>Both Jann and Gus Wenner, the president and chief operating officer of Wenner Media, said they intended to stay on at Rolling Stone. But they said they also recognized that the decision could ultimately be up to the new owner.
>Still, the potential sale of Rolling Stone — on the eve of its 50th anniversary, no less — underscores how inhospitable the media landscape has become as print advertising and circulation have dried up.
Brody Barnes
>“There’s a level of ambition that we can’t achieve alone,” Gus Wenner said last week in an interview at the magazine’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. “So we are being proactive and want to get ahead of the curve.”
>“Publishing is a completely different industry than what it was,” he added. “The trends go in one direction, and we are very aware of that.”
>The Wenners’ decision is also another clear sign that the days of celebrity editors are coming to a close. Earlier this month, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and a socialite and star in his own right, announced he planned to leave the magazine after 25 years. Robbie Myers, the longtime editor of Elle, Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine and Cindi Leive of Glamour also said last week that they were stepping down.
>Wenner Media has hired bankers to explore its sale, but the process is just beginning. BandLab’s stake in the company could also complicate matters. Neither Jann nor Gus Wenner would name any potential buyers, but one possible suitor is American Media Inc., the magazine publisher led by David J. Pecker that has already taken Us Weekly and Men’s Journal off Wenner Media’s hands.
>The Wenners said that they expected a range of opportunities, and Jann Wenner said he hoped to find a buyer that understood Rolling Stone’s mission and that had “lots of money.”
Adrian Sullivan
>“Rolling Stone has played such a role in the history of our times, socially and politically and culturally,” he said. “We want to retain that position.”
>But the headwinds buffeting the publishing industry, and some costly strategic missteps, have steadily taken a financial toll on Rolling Stone, and a botched story three years ago about an unproven gang rape at the University of Virginia badly bruised the magazine’s journalistic reputation.
>Jann Wenner tried his hand at other magazines over the decades, including the outdoor lifestyle magazine Outside and Family Life. But it was Rolling Stone that helped guide, and define, a generation.
>It filled its pages with pieces than ran in the thousands of words by standard bearers of the counterculture, including Hunter S. Thompson — whose “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” was published in the magazine in two parts — and Tom Wolfe. It started the career of the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, who for many years delivered electrifying cover images, including an iconic photograph in 1981 of a naked John Lennon curled in a fetal position with Yoko Ono.
>Music coverage in all of its forms — news, interviews, reviews — was the core of Rolling Stone, but its influence also stretched into pop culture, entertainment and politics.
Ayden Hill
>A bastion of liberal ideology, the magazine became a required stop for Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Wenner has personally interviewed several, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — and it has pulled no punches in its appraisal of Republicans. In 2006, Rolling Stone suggested George W. Bush was the “worst president in history.” More recently, the magazine featured Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, on its cover with the headline, “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”
>The magazine also published widely acclaimed political stories, including one in 2009 on Goldman Sachs by the writer Matt Taibbi, who famously described the company as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” The next year, the magazine ran a piece with the headline, “The Runaway General,” that ended the career of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
>But that was perhaps the last Rolling Stone cover piece that gained significant journalistic acclaim. And the magazine’s reputation as a tastemaker for the music world had long since eroded, as Mr. Wenner clung to the past with covers that featured artists from his generation, even as younger artists emerged. Artists like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have continued to secure cover spots in recent years.
Brody White
>Rolling Stone suffered a devastating blow to its reputation when it retracted a debunked 2014 article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia. A damning report on the story by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism cited fundamental journalistic failures. The article prompted three libel lawsuits against Rolling Stone, one of which led to a highly publicized trial last year that culminated with a federal jury awarding the plaintiff $3 million in damages.
>The financial picture had also been bleak. In 2001, Jann Wenner sold a 50 percent stake in Us Weekly to the Walt Disney Company for $40 million, then borrowed $300 million five years later to buy back the stake. The deal saddled the company with debt for more than a decade, preventing it from investing as much as it might have in its magazines.
>At the same time, Rolling Stone’s print advertising revenue and newsstand sales fell. And as readers increasingly embraced the web for their news and entertainment, Mr. Wenner remained skeptical, with a stubbornness that hamstrung his company.
>Wenner Media was already a small magazine publisher. But the sale of Us Weekly and Men’s Journal, which together brought in roughly three-quarters of Wenner Media’s revenue, has left it further diminished.
Xavier Robinson
What was the purpose of Rolling stone if they were just parroting the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Huffpo/Wapo? Can hardly claim to be counter cultural or le sticking it to the "man" if your ideology and position is blasted from the state and all media outlets 24/7 and you all smugly beating each others dicks in agreement.
Lucas Campbell
>Regardless, the sale of Rolling Stone would be Jann Wenner’s denouement, capping his unlikely rise from dope-smoking Berkeley dropout to silver-haired media mogul. An admirer of John Lennon and publishing mavens like William Randolph Hearst, Mr. Wenner — who invested $7,500 of borrowed money to start Rolling Stone along with his mentor, Ralph J. Gleason — was at turns idealist and desperado, crafting his magazine into a guide for the counterculture epoch while also gallivanting with superstars. He once boasted that he had turned down a $500 million offer for Rolling Stone, more than he could ever dream of getting for the magazine today. (BandLab invested $40 million to acquire its 49-percent stake in the magazine last year.)
>Though he said he still cared deeply about Rolling Stone, Mr. Wenner has placed the magazine’s fate firmly in Gus’s hands, and he appears content to let someone else determine its path forward.
>“I think it’s time for young people to run it,” he said.
Jaxon Lee
>Sitting in his second floor office surrounded by a collection of rock ’n’ roll artifacts, Gus Wenner expressed hope that a new owner would provide the resources Rolling Stone needed to evolve and survive.
>“It’s what we need to do as a business,” he said. “It’s what we need to do to grow the brand.”
>Then, as only someone who had spent his life around rock ’n’ roll could, he gestured confidently to a tome of Bob Dylan lyrics on his desk. “If you’re not busy being born,” Mr. Wenner said, “then you’re busy dying.”
Carson Garcia
well sadly they grew up in a counter culture bubble that swept them straight into a (way more than 3 million $) lawsuit that ultimately tanked their entire brand.
it doesn't appear there is much regret about this fact. despite the massive hoax, they kept the reporter on and said not a peep about it. They were thoroughly drunk off their own koolaid they had mixed together decades ago they didn't even notice it had gone so sour it turned poisonous.
Samuel Reyes
what lawsuit?
Rolling Stone hasn't really been counter culture in the last 20 years. They did some really great political reporting on issues like the financial crisis of 08 and various articles on Afghanistan. But ever since the obama's second term their articles have been shit.
I'm surprised that they lasted this long desu. The digital publishing boom killed off a lot of magazines and its hard to believe that rolling stone made it this long after it.
also it sucks that he sold half the company to some dickhead singapore company. should have kept it in the US. oh well.
they printed the UVA rape hoax story. they settled for millions. it tanked them. this is exactly what they get for hiring a feminist nutter who had no experience in journalism. she wrote an activism piece and passed it off as the real thing, the editors were all too happy to listen and believe.
Austin Turner
>we ruined those guys' lives with a hoax >we're the victims
Dylan Barnes
This is what happens when you change your narrative into the cancer that is Excessive Virtue Signalling.
Fucking faggot ass "ROLLING STONE". They put the fucking boston bomber on their cover.
The magazine is a tone-deaf boomer-tier cringefest. Disgusting hippie faggots who peaked in the 1960's hippie movement still think the publication has a sexy edge to it or something.
It would be like if Millenials still think Vice is cool in 10 years or something.
Fuck these media companies. So glad to see they are starting to close down due to immense faggotry and lying
Ethan Ortiz
>an unhinged feminist with problem glasses destroyed a legendary magazine with her delusional and naive stupidity
Women are horrible workers
Asher Jackson
>suffered a devastating blow to its reputation when it retracted Read it twice. This line is a deep look into their minds.
Carson Jackson
>they printed the UVA rape hoax story. they settled for millions. it tanked them. this is exactly what they get for hiring a feminist nutter who had no experience in journalism. she wrote an activism piece and passed it off as the real thing, the editors were all too happy to listen and believe.
First Gawker then Rolling Stone, I couldn't be happier to see hives of leftists burn.
Hollywood is next on the list. That new garbage posing as a Star Trek is going to hurt them immensely, more than Ghostbusters did.
Mason Foster
the fact that this jew looking rat creature got on a microphone in public and admitted to faking a story that won an award from rolling stone magazine and landed her a job, ostensibly saving her from a career in psychology, is so far away from flavor town idk what to think.
Aaron Jones
Lmfao I cannot believe how fucking gay Hollywood is now.
Instead of searching out geniuses to write an interesting script, they just keep re-making classic films but adding "DIVERSE" characters. Like they are trying to re-write film history by re-vising classic films and adding women/niggers.
So fucking stupid. Who goes to watch this shit? Why do they keep doing it even though sales are continually tanking? They have to be running on fumes at this point.
Zachary Brown
3 million tanked them?
Christian Brooks
They genuinely can't understand how people outside of their bubble think at this point.
Like why would anyone care more about artistic integrity and believable scenarios when DIVERSE is on the line?
Zuck is an alien freak and a hypocrite about private info but at least he is smart enough to understand that one thing about living in a bubble. The rank and file leftists even up to hollywood director level are not smart enough to be able to 'extrospect' as it were.
Ryder Cook
Media companies don't have that much capital or liquidity
Even the big ones are somewhat fragile.
Mason Phillips
>Non-Jewish owned magazine gets destroyed from within by Jewess reporter, possibly with help from other tribe member editors >Then sold to Jews for pennies
Elijah Martin
it was way more than 3 million, that's what the ancillary character in the story got even after the libtard judge christened her a minor celeb since her job title could be construed as being the public face of the university.
they settled undisclosed amounts with the frat and the members, and most likely the college as well, since the rabid sjw's shut down the frat, and alot of other frat activities on campus for two or so years. the amount of money that UVA lost to this incident is hard to quantify.
and that's saying nothing about what happened to the magazine's reputation, which was already starting to fail since they stuck it out with print even though they were getting slammed by online publications putting out better shit, faster.
Gavin Lewis
When Gawker burned similarly it was later revealed massive damage was caused via advertisters silently not renewing contracts.
The number of the lawsuit is a pittance next to the realized loss of revenue.
They, being media oriented leftists, take great pains to hide this simple truth because of course it will start an avalanche. Their reputation is all that they are.
Bentley King
forgot the link, here's a quick breakdown of the 3 million dollar lawsuit that Rolling Stone fought in court. they actually thought they were going to get away with it, hence why they took it all the way to jury trial and then got stomped.
Somebody will just buy the name and logo and stick it on a SJW blog like 'Cracked'
Wenner will probably get about 2-3 thousand for it, if he throws in a free blow-job.
Brayden Green
S
Tyler Wright
I hope it goes down in flames. It's been mostly leftist garbage for the last decade or more. When they published that issue with the fucking Boston bomber on the cover, glamorizing him like he was Jim Morrison or something, it was disgusting. I never picked up another issue.
>Of course, “public opinion” online is hard to gauge, since it tends to be determined by the loudest and most persistent voices. If you can mobilize and engage even a fairly small number of people, you can create an impression of enough outrage to destabilize a business. As Gawker was imploding in the summer of 2015, a group of teenage video-game enthusiasts was throwing gasoline on the already-raging fire. These were the Gamergaters.
Any denial you hear of this is a leftist or shill trying to sleep better at night and pretend the world loves them and their ideas.
David Baker
Gee thats too bad.. I used to enjoy going to the magazine counter and crumpling up that shitty rag even tearing off the front page so no one would want to buy it.. I'll sure miss that.
How much of the liberal media is just funded by B.S. Most of MSM have pointless commercials like General electric doing a muh women engineer ad. Completely pointless and not even selling anything
Vice gets most of it's funding from the CIA and intel operations. Hollywood is probably the same way.
I really doubt that any media has a goal of producing good content versus just cashing in on whatever psyops CIA, NSA, or elites want to push
Carter James
>turn fifty >sell out much like Bernie hah!
William Gomez
F
Jaxon Jones
former prosecutor claims UVA is a hotbed of rape that's been going on for a long time. (before story was exposed as a fraud)
