Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Even before Wenner made his move, Spin editor Alan Light took a stroll, ostensibly to start his own magazine, though his replacement, Sia Michel, has said she will make some changes that could make the magazine more Blender-like. And in announcing Love's imminent departure, Wenner also pledged to put his journal on a shorter lead time while speeding up the production cycle in the interest of breaking news sooner.
But in his publicized search for an M.E. -- all the more notable given the number of editors out of work in New York -- Wenner seemed to indicate that he was not willing to sell out completely. After a meeting with former Maxim editor Mark Golin (now an AOL vice president and creative director) the two deemed the union a nonstarter. Golin, who briefly brought his short-and-snappy style to Condé Nast's Details in 1999 before getting the heave, was more interested in rebuilding Rolling Stone from the ground up than Wenner was. For all his tough talk, it seemed Wenner was unwilling to throw the baby out with the bong water.
In the 37-year-old Needham (who some have suggested was his first choice all along), Wenner seems to have found an editor willing to try it both ways. After some early remarks disparaging Rolling Stone's perpetual "wall of copy," Needham went on the offensive, qualifying his remarks to anyone who called. "One of the things that has made Rolling Stone the magazine that it is, is its great journalistic pedigree," he told the Guardian, "and I certainly intend to preserve and maintain that." To the San Francisco Chronicle's Dan Fost he was even more blunt: "It's certainly not the end of Rolling Stone as you know it," he insisted.
Right. That happened some time ago. Since the first issues of Rolling Stone rolled off the printers at San Francisco's Garrett Press (publishers of the Hillsdale Merchandiser and the Irish Herald) in 1967, Wenner has tweaked the magazine several times. In the late '70s he dragged the publication from the West Coast to New York, launching a few new titles (Us, Men's Journal) along the way. As music mutated (disco, punk, rap, grunge) Rolling Stone struggled to keep up while covering politics, movies, even the odd crime story. But by trying to reach a younger audience even as it holds onto the old with the other hand, Rolling Stone is starting to look contorted, like some aging hipster playing Twister until his back gives out.
It's a scary time in the magazine business. The ad market is flat (though some publications saw a bump in May), tobacco companies are pulling out of publications aimed at minors and many ad buyers perceive Rolling Stone in particular as catering to an aging demographic. While Wenner likes to point out that the average age of its readers is 27, the twin blades of Perception and Reality -- the key words behind a famous Rolling Stone 1985 ad campaign -- cut both ways.
So why not start over? Go after the kids you crave with whatever it is you think kids want while letting the august title of Rolling Stone go out with some dignity. Old wheezers like me (who saw the Faces when they were still Small) can comfort themselves with what they remember of the magazine in its glory days while the belly-button set can enjoy yet another outlet for nearly-naked Natalie Portman pictures. The fix that Needham promises -- "busier design, a lot of entry points on every page" -- will certainly remind us of Blender, but the mix will no doubt be familiar to any reader of general-interest magazines. Wherein lies the problem.
As Wenner himself has noted, a lot of titles are feeding off the menu he helped invent. Entertainment Weekly has launched a regular music supplement; Vanity Fair socks its readers with a fall music issue the size of the Manhattan phone book; magazines and newspapers alike pursue celebrities with the same slavish devotion. But none of them pretends to be the country's preeminent rock publication. Though putting Portman on the cover certainly appeals to some younger readers, it's got nothing to do with music. The same issue (June 28) featured a paltry 16 CD reviews (as opposed to the 195 in the June/July Blender, a number touted on its cover) and, aside from a short profile of Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, no real rock 'n' roll features.
As Rolling Stone has slowly morphed into a magazine just like dozens of others, it has lost its reason for being. It was never meant to be the ultimate magazine of the music business (Billboard still does that just fine, thanks); if anything it was meant to give the finger to that business, as well as magazine publishing in general, television, Madison Avenue, the Pentagon, etc. Without that contrary attitude -- or any attitude at all, for the most part -- Rolling Stone seems like an anachronism, the Ladies' Home Journal of rock journalism.
