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Rolling Stone Magazine · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck. It's the one o'clock hour. I just
0:16
Speaker 1: had a nice Caesar salad, so that means it's time
0:18
Speaker 1: for stuff you should do. How do do you dress
0:21
Speaker 1: your lightly or do you like it? I do it smartly.
0:27
Speaker 1: I start out light and then add is needed. Okay,
0:31
Speaker 1: because you know I've I've experienced the regret of too
0:33
Speaker 1: much salad dressing. Right, you can't take it away. No,
0:38
Speaker 1: you can't undring that bell, you cannot. Yeah. Uh, Rolling
0:44
Speaker 1: Stone Magazine, what's your history with this rag? It's um
0:49
Speaker 1: a couple it goes back a couple of days at least. Oh,
0:52
Speaker 1: you were never into the magazine at all. No, I
0:55
Speaker 1: mean I've read plenty of like Rolling Stone articles over
0:57
Speaker 1: the years, like Matt tub stuff, um, some Hunter Thompson stuff,
1:02
Speaker 1: and of course, you know, every once in a while,
1:03
Speaker 1: I'll just run across a really good article from like
1:06
Speaker 1: years back. Right, but that was it. Never had a subscription,
1:09
Speaker 1: never bought it at the magazine rack or anything like that. Okay,
1:13
Speaker 1: you know, I just wasn't into it. I didn't hate
1:16
Speaker 1: on it or anything like that. It just was never
1:18
Speaker 1: into it, not like you're going to today. I won't
1:22
Speaker 1: hate on it today. I'll just reveal facts. Yeah. So
1:27
Speaker 1: my history, if you care, is, uh, I always loved
1:33
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone Magazine and I continue to digitally subscribe, and uh,
1:40
Speaker 1: you know it is, as we will learn, it is
1:42
Speaker 1: not a magazine without its downs and controversies. Um. And
1:50
Speaker 1: you know it's as Ed even points out in this research,
1:54
Speaker 1: like it's sort of been sport over the last two
1:57
Speaker 1: decades to sort of debate when then if Rolling Stone
2:01
Speaker 1: has lost its way. Uh, but it's a magazine that
2:06
Speaker 1: I always Um, I just took what I took from it,
2:11
Speaker 1: like when I was reading you know, at the end
2:12
Speaker 1: of this we'll get to some of their biggest controversial
2:14
Speaker 1: articles and like very poor shoddy journalism, Like I never
2:19
Speaker 1: read any of those. So I've always just sort of
2:21
Speaker 1: taken from it what I wanted to and uh, not
2:26
Speaker 1: really thought about it a lot until this research. Man,
2:29
Speaker 1: there's nothing more rock and roll than that. But I
2:33
Speaker 1: do want to plug another magazine. What Cream Magazine is back?
2:37
Speaker 1: Oh really? Yeah, I've seen people be you know, the
2:40
Speaker 1: ones in the know, Like Cream was always better than
2:45
Speaker 1: well it was, and uh, like my magazine of choice
2:49
Speaker 1: for music since the probably early two thousand's was Magnets,
2:53
Speaker 1: which I still oh yeah, you know, it went away,
2:56
Speaker 1: then it came back and then but Cream is back now,
3:00
Speaker 1: and you I think you get I subscribed immediately. You
3:03
Speaker 1: get four paper copies per year like a quarterly issue,
3:07
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. But what's really cool, dude,
3:11
Speaker 1: is if you subscribe, you get access to all of
3:15
Speaker 1: the archives. So it's really fun to go back and
3:19
Speaker 1: read like a contemporaneous Lester Bangs or Cameron Crow piece
3:23
Speaker 1: uh from Cream magazine. So I highly recommend here at
3:27
Speaker 1: the beginning of our Rolling Stone article to subscribe to
3:30
Speaker 1: the new Cream. So yeah, Cream. The impression I have
3:34
Speaker 1: is Cream is the one that like really was true
3:38
Speaker 1: to what it was going for pretty much from start
3:41
Speaker 1: to finish, while Rolling Stone was viewed as more like
3:44
Speaker 1: the corporate version of that almost from the outset. Yeah.
3:49
Speaker 1: The reason that it was viewed as that and still
3:51
Speaker 1: is today is because the guy one of the founders,
3:54
Speaker 1: Yawn Winner, was super corporate, like that was his goal.
3:59
Speaker 1: He was in ambitious, um hippie hanger on basically who
4:03
Speaker 1: happened to be in San Francisco when the Summer of
4:07
Speaker 1: Love happened, when psychedelic rock broke out, when like the
4:10
Speaker 1: sixties like really we're like happening in San Francisco was
4:14
Speaker 1: the epicenter. And that's not to say he like didn't
4:17
Speaker 1: dig it and wasn't moved by it, But he also
4:19
Speaker 1: saw that this was a really important thing, at least
4:23
Speaker 1: to him and a lot of other people, and he
4:25
Speaker 1: saw that he could probably sell ads against this, so
4:29
Speaker 1: he did what he knew how to do when he
4:31
Speaker 1: started a magazine, as we'll see. Yeah, that's a nice
4:34
Speaker 1: little intro. And for those of you who don't know,
4:37
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone is the music largely music magazine, but also
4:42
Speaker 1: over the ensuing years is since November nine seven, has
4:46
Speaker 1: branched out into all manner of pop culture and politics,
4:50
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we we didn't want to not
4:54
Speaker 1: mention what it was in case you happened to live
4:56
Speaker 1: under a Rolling Stone. Oh man, is that written down
5:00
Speaker 1: in your notes? No? I just yeah, WHOA. So should
5:05
Speaker 1: we go back in time a bit? Yeah, So let's
5:08
Speaker 1: getting the way back machine and go back to the
5:10
Speaker 1: sixties in San Francisco and it's dusty in here, Um,
5:13
Speaker 1: a contact buzz from some grass that's being smiled. They
5:17
Speaker 1: called it grass back then. Uh so yeah, you know,
5:26
Speaker 1: Ed is very astute to point out that the origins
5:28
Speaker 1: of Rolling Stone is kind of born out of this
5:31
Speaker 1: sort of um certainly nineteen sixties, but maybe even before,
5:37
Speaker 1: um left wing all rags that are self published, these
5:42
Speaker 1: sort of poorly printed black and white magazines about the
5:46
Speaker 1: counterculture that never really desired to make money. Uh, and
5:51
Speaker 1: you know, most of them were super regional and never
5:53
Speaker 1: like went outside of, um, usually the city that they
5:56
Speaker 1: were in as far as distribution. But Rolling Stone was
6:00
Speaker 1: kind of born out of this idea and in particular
6:03
Speaker 1: got a lot of its influence from a San Francisco
6:08
Speaker 1: based magazine called Ramparts. Yeah, which was like far far left,
6:14
Speaker 1: radical left politics magazine. Um, there was a headline and
6:18
Speaker 1: I think nineteen sixty eight, maybe even earlier than that
6:22
Speaker 1: that Ramparts ran it was Ramparts offers ten thousand dollars
6:26
Speaker 1: for information leading to the arresting conviction of any cop
6:30
Speaker 1: who was murdered a black man. That was on their cover.
6:33
Speaker 1: But it was on their cover and there's like a
6:35
Speaker 1: cop pointing a gun at you. The viewer from the
6:38
Speaker 1: magazine's cover. And that's you know, okay, it's you know, shocking,
6:42
Speaker 1: especially for for even back then. But it's even more
6:45
Speaker 1: shocking when you realize that just a few years before
6:48
Speaker 1: Ramparts have been lost launched as an intellectual catholic quarterly. Yeah.
6:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know why they kept the
6:55
Speaker 1: same name. It was a complete redo, it really was.
6:59
Speaker 1: And the guy who redid it was a guy mean,
7:01
Speaker 1: Warren Hinkel And you can't talk about Rolling Stone without
7:03
Speaker 1: talking about Warren Hinkele. That's right. He transfermed that magazine
7:08
Speaker 1: into that, you know, that leftist rag that they knew,
7:11
Speaker 1: and it was you know, obviously big in San Francisco,
7:13
Speaker 1: but it reached national levels of fame, if not like
7:18
Speaker 1: widespread fame, like the writers were like featured on talk
7:22
Speaker 1: shows and um other kind of notably, I guess when
7:26
Speaker 1: you're a magazine being written by other magazine being written
7:30
Speaker 1: about by other magazines, you've definitely made your mark. And
7:33
Speaker 1: Time magazine even had a very famous article called a
7:37
Speaker 1: bomb in every issue. I think it was a cover
7:39
Speaker 1: article on Rampart's magazine. Uh. And though it would exist
7:44
Speaker 1: alongside Rolling Stone for a little while, in the seventies.
7:48
Speaker 1: It was not a big, widespread financial success, and obviously
7:53
Speaker 1: because his politics had a pretty um just by nature
7:57
Speaker 1: of of what it was a sort of limited audience.
8:00
Speaker 1: And so Yan Winner, who was one of the founders
8:02
Speaker 1: of Rolling Stone, who basically personified Rolling Stone over the
8:05
Speaker 1: decades because he was the CEO for years and years
8:08
Speaker 1: and years. He was involved in ramparts Um through a
8:12
Speaker 1: guy named Ralph Gleason, who will meet in a second.
8:14
Speaker 1: But the upshot of this is that jan Winner saw
8:17
Speaker 1: ramparts what it was doing, how important it was, and
8:20
Speaker 1: that it never really took off. That I saw it
8:23
Speaker 1: blew through at least two personal fortunes Rampart magazine did
8:26
Speaker 1: before it declared bankruptcy. And he noted that and he
8:30
Speaker 1: he kind of took it to heart for his magazine,
8:32
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone, And the lesson for him was reflect the
8:36
Speaker 1: counter culture without actually like furthering the agenda, and you
8:40
Speaker 1: can probably be absorbed by much more people and be
8:43
Speaker 1: palatable to advertisers too. Yeah, And as far as Winner goes,
8:48
Speaker 1: he himself was a college dropout from Berkeley Um. He
8:53
Speaker 1: is sort of the personification of what we now think
8:56
Speaker 1: of as like the Boomer generation, which is to say
9:00
Speaker 1: that he uh and and probably still does. You know,
9:03
Speaker 1: Um just sort of laud that generation and everything they
9:07
Speaker 1: did as the utmost importance, and the music of the
9:12
Speaker 1: time and the movements of the time were truly historic
9:15
Speaker 1: and not to be um trifled with. And also in
9:20
Speaker 1: a sort of boomer esquay um said, but you know
9:23
Speaker 1: what's great as making tons of money, right, being a
9:27
Speaker 1: capitalist and loving coke? Sure, yeah, I'm sure that was not. Uh,
9:37
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were not. In short supply, he was
9:41
Speaker 1: very famous for his ability to put put away bags
9:44
Speaker 1: of cocaine. All right, So you mentioned Ralph Gleeson who
9:47
Speaker 1: were going to meet. He was a jazz critic of
9:49
Speaker 1: music critic who also dabbled in the rock and roll world.
9:52
Speaker 1: But he was not a boomer. He was born in
9:55
Speaker 1: I think nineteen seventeen, so he was thirty ish years
9:59
Speaker 1: older than Venner and they met at a Jefferson Airplane
10:03
Speaker 1: concert and became buddies, and I think, uh, John Winner
10:07
Speaker 1: really looked up to him, and they sort of developed
10:09
Speaker 1: a mentor relationship mentor mint mentee is that what it is?
10:14
Speaker 1: It depends. So if if Gleason was strictly kind of
10:18
Speaker 1: advising and training and teaching um Yahn Winner, that would
10:24
Speaker 1: make him a mentee. But if he did anything to
10:27
Speaker 1: further Jon Winner's career, which he ended up doing, that
10:30
Speaker 1: would make Winner his protege. Okay, well, let's just say
10:34
Speaker 1: it was a mix of both. Sure, I just I
10:36
Speaker 1: looked it up and I really wanted to share that
10:39
Speaker 1: I got you there's a distinction. But they were friends,
10:43
Speaker 1: and I believe it was Gleason that also worked for Ramparts.
10:49
Speaker 1: Uh some and then when Ramparts fell apart, Uh, they
10:54
Speaker 1: hatched the idea for Rolling Stone magazine. Well it so
10:57
Speaker 1: Gleason left even before Ramparts fell apart because as Warren
11:00
Speaker 1: Hinkel did not love the psychedelic rock era, did not
11:04
Speaker 1: love hippies um, and Ralph Gleeson did even though it
11:08
Speaker 1: was a jazz critic. He definitely got the psychedelic movement
11:11
Speaker 1: and was very um appreciative of it and wrote very
11:15
Speaker 1: kindly about it in his columns in Ramparts. Um, but
11:19
Speaker 1: they're falling out happened when Warren Hinkel ran The Social
11:23
Speaker 1: History of the Hippies, which was a pretty unflattering cover
11:27
Speaker 1: story about hippies and the Summer of Love and how
11:30
Speaker 1: basically he accused them of of falling down on the
11:33
Speaker 1: job of taking over the responsibility to steer the country
11:37
Speaker 1: and instead they were just off like dropping acid enshirking
11:40
Speaker 1: the responsibility, which would pan out to be really prescient
11:43
Speaker 1: when you're talking about the baby boomer boomer generation, right,
11:46
Speaker 1: And um, Ralph Gleason didn't appreciate that at all, so
11:50
Speaker 1: he left in disgust. He quit Ramparts. And that was
11:53
Speaker 1: about the time when Winner was like, hey, let's make
11:55
Speaker 1: a magazine together, Summer of Love. Who can forget know?
12:00
Speaker 1: Oh wait, no, it's seventy two. Yeah, because John Volta
12:04
Speaker 1: played the woodstock for that Summer of Love concert and
12:08
Speaker 1: seventy two. Oh boy, always feel bad for people who
12:14
Speaker 1: don't pick up on the inside jokes. We'll get some emails.
12:17
Speaker 1: That's all right, it's fun. Uh So they again hatch
12:20
Speaker 1: this idea together and they really, um kind of borrowed
12:24
Speaker 1: a lot from Ramparts, um, not the least of which
12:27
Speaker 1: was their logo. Um. If you look at the Ramparts logo,
12:32
Speaker 1: it's I don't know if it's exactly the same font.
12:34
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's They probably technically might have made a
12:37
Speaker 1: new font, but it looks a lot like that font
12:41
Speaker 1: and not the original Rolling Stone magazine font because the
12:44
Speaker 1: earliest issues it was definitely a little bit different. But
12:47
Speaker 1: the one that we all know today is the Rolling
12:49
Speaker 1: Stone font looks a lot like ramparts. Uh. They definitely
12:53
Speaker 1: hired away a lot of people from that magazine, including, um,
12:58
Speaker 1: you know, some of the designers, some of the writers,
13:00
Speaker 1: some of the some of the editors, photographers, and even
13:06
Speaker 1: the office space. They raised, Um, they wanted to raise
13:09
Speaker 1: ten grand, but they ended up raising sears from a
13:13
Speaker 1: variety of investors, including uh Jane Winner uh in her family,
13:19
Speaker 1: who was Joan Winner's wife, who actually had a much
13:23
Speaker 1: larger role in the early days of the magazine than
13:25
Speaker 1: I believe she's usually given credit for. Yeah, I saw
13:29
Speaker 1: it described in I think it was an Atlantic article.
13:32
Speaker 1: Is that where where it was? Um, Yeah, that was
13:34
Speaker 1: a great article, it really was. I think it was
13:36
Speaker 1: called the Rise and Fall of Rolling Stone or something
13:38
Speaker 1: like that. Um. And uh Jane Schindelheim Winner is described
13:43
Speaker 1: as basically being the She's she was so cool that
13:46
Speaker 1: her her personality was what attracted those you know, cool
13:51
Speaker 1: photographers and cool musicians and just people to the magazine
13:55
Speaker 1: that they wanted to be close to her basically or
13:58
Speaker 1: she knew how to behave around them basically A yeah,
14:01
Speaker 1: and they had a um interesting marriage. He came out
14:05
Speaker 1: of the closet in the mid nineties, much to her, well,
14:08
Speaker 1: I say much to her surprise. Apparently she had heard
14:11
Speaker 1: rumors over the years and things like that. But I
14:14
Speaker 1: think it was sort of a sudden thing for her
14:16
Speaker 1: and did not go down well. And I believe he's
14:19
Speaker 1: been in a partnership with the same gentleman since then. Yeah,
14:23
Speaker 1: it was this. It was a sudden surprise for John
14:25
Speaker 1: Winner two because I read that he was outed by
14:28
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal without his permission or even interesting
14:31
Speaker 1: even a heads up, just outed him in the pages
14:34
Speaker 1: of the Wall Street Journal. The author even pondered, like, wow,
14:38
Speaker 1: is this is this scandal going to be the thing
14:40
Speaker 1: that sinks Rolling Stone? But it was by then or
14:44
Speaker 1: ninety four, and everybody's like, cares you know, it's I
14:47
Speaker 1: don't think that qualifies as a scandal. Yeah, absolutely, Um,
14:51
Speaker 1: so they have this money they got the uh at
14:56
Speaker 1: his points out that John Winner kept his Porsche though
14:59
Speaker 1: it's not like he his force to raise money for
15:02
Speaker 1: the for the magazine. Uh. So they got the money
15:05
Speaker 1: together and they hire a bunch of the Ramparts people.
15:08
Speaker 1: They in fact used um a lot of the same equipment.
15:12
Speaker 1: The magazine was the same size, had a bit of
15:15
Speaker 1: the same look. They had a bunch of unused paper,
15:18
Speaker 1: uh from Ramparts that they were able to use. And
15:20
Speaker 1: they even used the offices where they printed it. I
15:23
Speaker 1: think the loft above the office was where they first
15:26
Speaker 1: made their homes. So they really had a bit of
15:28
Speaker 1: a head start. Yeah, and so it Ramparts had spun
15:31
Speaker 1: off something called the Sunday Ramparts newspaper and that's what
15:33
Speaker 1: had gone to funk. So Ramparts of the magazine is
15:36
Speaker 1: still going at this time, but they used all the
15:38
Speaker 1: Sunday Ramparts newspaper stuff, including staff, right, so they have
15:42
Speaker 1: well when it worked for them, Yeah, and and when
15:45
Speaker 1: Glease and quit in protest, and I think shortly after
15:49
Speaker 1: that the Sunday Ramparts newspaper folded. That's when they got
15:52
Speaker 1: together and did this. And then like you said, they
15:54
Speaker 1: did it with bucks and they were able to print
15:58
Speaker 1: I think forty thousand copies of Rolling Stone number one.
16:02
Speaker 1: There was a last minute decision to put a production
16:05
Speaker 1: still of John Lennon in the from the movie How
16:09
Speaker 1: I Won the War wearing like um, like fatigues and
16:13
Speaker 1: like um a helmet with netting on it and everything
16:16
Speaker 1: he's looking at the Camera's a very famous photograph and
16:19
Speaker 1: they said that it was like a perfect mix or
16:21
Speaker 1: perfect um metaphor for the mix of like politics, culture
16:25
Speaker 1: and music all rolled into one. It really was a
16:28
Speaker 1: perfect photo for Rolling Stone number one's cover, for sure.
16:32
Speaker 1: I think so, uh, maybe we could take a break
16:34
Speaker 1: and talk about how that first issue fareds that is
16:38
Speaker 1: that for a cliffhanger, it's great, all right, we'll be
16:41
Speaker 1: right back and shock stop. Did it sell? No? Did
17:07
Speaker 1: it sell no? Chuck? Now, that first forty thousand, I
17:11
Speaker 1: believe thirty four thousand issues were returned. I think a
17:15
Speaker 1: lot of this was in part to the fact that
17:18
Speaker 1: they tried to be their own distributor, which they realized
17:21
Speaker 1: right away was not a good idea. Uh, and so
17:24
Speaker 1: they quickly signed deals with distributors and news stands, and
17:29
Speaker 1: UH realized that you know, at cents a copy, weren't
17:33
Speaker 1: going to make a lot of money with that sort
17:35
Speaker 1: of distributor partnership. Model. No. So, I mean they did
17:38
Speaker 1: the sensible thing, and they gave up a pretty significant
17:41
Speaker 1: chunk of their their margin to that distribution distribution company.
17:46
Speaker 1: But in return, they were able to grow grow, grow,
17:48
Speaker 1: like from issue number two or three. I'm not sure
17:50
Speaker 1: exactly when they took on that new distributor, but it
17:53
Speaker 1: was pretty soon after the failure of the first issue. Yeah,
17:57
Speaker 1: and then they started selling pretty well. Um, as far
18:00
Speaker 1: as the name goes, they did get a thing sort
18:04
Speaker 1: of threatened, um legally speaking, by the Rolling Stones music group. Um,
18:10
Speaker 1: but they sort of got out of that pretty quickly.
18:12
Speaker 1: I think they may have realized, hey, maybe it's good
18:15
Speaker 1: to be friends with this up and coming music magazine.
18:17
Speaker 1: I don't really know for sure, but yeah, that would
18:20
Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah. I saw um that it was I
18:23
Speaker 1: saw I described as a letter writing campaign or correspondence
18:26
Speaker 1: between that was initiated by Mick Jagger to John Winner
18:30
Speaker 1: basically saying, hey, man, you can use this, but how
18:32
Speaker 1: about some free advertising and lots of really good coverage
18:35
Speaker 1: and all that. Um exactly what? Yeah, And I guess
18:40
Speaker 1: they got dropped or something like that. Supposedly only that
18:42
Speaker 1: initial letters survived, so no one knows exactly how it
18:45
Speaker 1: panned out. But John Winner was definitely the kind of
18:47
Speaker 1: person to trade you know, space for something else, like
18:51
Speaker 1: maybe advertising dollars or you know, a favorable review of
18:57
Speaker 1: a record um in Rich earned for that record company
19:01
Speaker 1: or the parent company, Advertising and Rolling Stone. He was
19:04
Speaker 1: definitely not only not not above doing that, he was
19:07
Speaker 1: actively chasing that kind of opportunity. Yeah, and you know,
19:12
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a lot of people that would
19:14
Speaker 1: stand up and say that Jan Winner was the greatest
19:16
Speaker 1: boss they ever had, especially back in those days. I
19:19
Speaker 1: think he might have cleaned up his act, you know,
19:21
Speaker 1: later on, But in the sixties and seventies, it was
19:24
Speaker 1: very well known that he would, like you said, make
19:27
Speaker 1: these sort of under the table deals. He would play
19:30
Speaker 1: labels and writers against one another, uh ad, sales people
19:34
Speaker 1: against one another. He was apparently a pretty cruel editor.
19:38
Speaker 1: He was never the best writer in the world. He
19:40
Speaker 1: wrote some reviews and things here and there, but that
19:44
Speaker 1: wasn't his strong suit. But um yeah, he was known
19:47
Speaker 1: as being fairly misogynist and sexist and sort of all
19:51
Speaker 1: the things you might imagine from a uh sort of
19:54
Speaker 1: magazine editor in chief. In the nineteen seventies, yeah, like
19:57
Speaker 1: a good example for the first issue and early on
20:00
Speaker 1: in Rolling Stones Life, Um, a guy named Michael Lyden
20:04
Speaker 1: was the managing editor and he used to write for Newsweek,
20:07
Speaker 1: and he brought his wife Linda along, who was also
20:09
Speaker 1: a writer and an editor, and Jon Winner made Linda
20:13
Speaker 1: answer the phones because she was one of the few
20:15
Speaker 1: women working there. Right, it's a good example. Yeah, And
20:19
Speaker 1: this isn't a hit piece. There's a a very well
20:22
Speaker 1: known biography of Beyond Winner out there that is um also,
20:27
Speaker 1: while not a hit piece, not very kind to him
20:29
Speaker 1: at all, the Sticky Fingers one that came out, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:32
Speaker 1: So he had been, apparently on Winner had been shopping
20:35
Speaker 1: his his story around for you know, to be written,
20:39
Speaker 1: initially by a ghostwriter and then finally a biographer. Like
20:42
Speaker 1: he couldn't get anybody to do it because he was
20:44
Speaker 1: just known as such a control freak and everybody was like,
20:47
Speaker 1: I do not want to be involved with you for
20:49
Speaker 1: three or four years writing your story, Like he would
20:53
Speaker 1: pick a part line by line captions under photos in magazines.
20:57
Speaker 1: This is in the nineties. He was still doing this,
21:00
Speaker 1: you know, like he was that kind of Boston You
21:02
Speaker 1: can just imagine what a train wrecked nightmare. He would
21:05
Speaker 1: have been if you were his biographer. He finally got
21:08
Speaker 1: somebody to do it, but that somebody said, dude, you've
21:11
Speaker 1: got to give me creative control over this. You have
21:13
Speaker 1: to give you freedom, and the you know, the guy
21:16
Speaker 1: like you said. It wasn't a hit piece, but it
21:18
Speaker 1: also wasn't just fawning and flattering like apparently Yon Winner
21:21
Speaker 1: had kind of hoped it would be. Right of course. Um,
21:24
Speaker 1: as far as circulation goes, they say that it peaked
21:28
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight with a circulation of one
21:31
Speaker 1: point four million, uh and as around five hundred thousand today,
21:36
Speaker 1: about twenty seven thousand of which is actually I believe,
21:40
Speaker 1: like you know, paper copies, although maybe that's just news
21:44
Speaker 1: stand and not subscription. Yeah. I was wondering if that
21:48
Speaker 1: number reflects their um digital subscribership, because actually it is.
21:54
Speaker 1: And honestly, I never really knew what magazine distribution equaled anyway,
21:59
Speaker 1: so I was surprised is that it peaked at one
22:02
Speaker 1: point four million, which just seems for such an iconic
22:05
Speaker 1: magazine that just doesn't seem like a lot of human
22:08
Speaker 1: beings reading a magazine. No, I mean, think about it,
22:11
Speaker 1: We're not too far off from Rolling stones peak. You know,
22:14
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say that, but that's what I
22:16
Speaker 1: was thinking. I was like, I had a Caesar salad
22:18
Speaker 1: for lunch, so I'm feeling rather chilled anyway. Um, yeah,
22:24
Speaker 1: I don't know what I thought it would be a
22:25
Speaker 1: figure to be like ten million or something like that,
22:27
Speaker 1: but no, that's still rather respectable one pointion. That's subscribed
22:31
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, I believe. Yeah, circulation. I
22:33
Speaker 1: think that includes new stands sales. But the reason I'm
22:36
Speaker 1: wondering whether the web or the digital subscribers are included
22:40
Speaker 1: in that later number the recent stuff, is because they
22:45
Speaker 1: very famously, I should say, Yahn Winner very famously shunned
22:49
Speaker 1: the idea of moving into the digital realm. And even
22:53
Speaker 1: even as his son Gus was the guy who was
22:56
Speaker 1: running the digital arm, he still wouldn't give him resources
23:00
Speaker 1: to support like a genuine website. Yeah. An example I
23:03
Speaker 1: saw is that Rolling Stone broke some story. I can't
23:06
Speaker 1: remember what story it was, but it was a big story,
23:08
Speaker 1: and um, everybody had to go read about it on
23:12
Speaker 1: other digital news sites because they hadn't posted anything or
23:16
Speaker 1: the story on Rolling Stone website. Like it was like
23:19
Speaker 1: that interesting. Uh. They've also changed format just size wise
23:24
Speaker 1: over the years. They they started out, you know as
23:27
Speaker 1: a sort of regular size smaller magazine or or should
23:31
Speaker 1: I just say average magazine. Um, And it was in
23:34
Speaker 1: black and white with the with a little bit of
23:36
Speaker 1: color here and there, like a single color process, and
23:38
Speaker 1: then in the early seventies switched to a for color
23:41
Speaker 1: process and went to that glossy large format style that
23:47
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone like to me, was really known for. It
23:50
Speaker 1: was always just different because it was a big, large magazine,
23:55
Speaker 1: but also it was glossy, but it wasn't like the
23:57
Speaker 1: glossy slick magazine pages of day. It wasn't it glossy
24:01
Speaker 1: newsprint basically. Yeah, So that that gave it its own
24:05
Speaker 1: field too, along with the size, Like it was definitely
24:08
Speaker 1: its own own thing, right, But then it went back
24:12
Speaker 1: to the small, and then now is back to the big,
24:14
Speaker 1: isn't there? Right? Yeah? In two thousand and eight they
24:16
Speaker 1: went to standard magazine size. In two thousand and eighteen
24:18
Speaker 1: they said, I'll forget it, We're going back to the
24:20
Speaker 1: ten by twelve. I'm glad they did. I mean that's
24:23
Speaker 1: I don't again, I don't buy the paper version, but
24:27
Speaker 1: I just always associated that sort of iconic tin by
24:30
Speaker 1: it turns out eleven and three quarter size. It's a
24:35
Speaker 1: quarter inch really bugs me, Yeah, it does. He just
24:37
Speaker 1: made me snort man good. So. Um. Initially Rolling Stone
24:42
Speaker 1: was like a national magazine that was centered in San
24:46
Speaker 1: Francisco because again that was the epicenter of the hippie
24:49
Speaker 1: movement of everything that was going on that was important
24:51
Speaker 1: in the late sixties and early seventies, right. But then
24:55
Speaker 1: Jon Winner kind of spiritually decamped from San Francisco even
24:59
Speaker 1: before the magazine did. And then finally Ralph Gleason, Remember
25:03
Speaker 1: Ralph Gleason, the jazz critic who kind of co founded
25:05
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone. He kept a column in every issue where
25:09
Speaker 1: basically he was just talking about San Francisco goings on
25:12
Speaker 1: or whatever, and he eventually was like the last tether
25:16
Speaker 1: to the origin the roots in San Francisco. And when
25:19
Speaker 1: he died, Jan Winner waited a couple more years and
25:23
Speaker 1: then moved the whole thing to New York City and
25:25
Speaker 1: it was officially a gen bona fide national, you could
25:28
Speaker 1: even say international magazine around that time. Yeah, And I
25:32
Speaker 1: think from what I understand, when Gleeson died, he was
25:35
Speaker 1: sort of battling with Winner at the time. Uh, and
25:39
Speaker 1: that they had had fallings out and I believe I'm
25:43
Speaker 1: not so sure if it was personal, but maybe it
25:45
Speaker 1: got personal, but it was definitely over like the direction
25:49
Speaker 1: of the magazine. I think I always got the feeling
25:52
Speaker 1: that Gleeson was a little less likely to be accused
25:56
Speaker 1: of some of the sort of sell out things that
25:59
Speaker 1: went Winner would eventually be accused of. He was a
26:02
Speaker 1: jazz critic. That's not exactly as you pursue when you're
26:07
Speaker 1: an ambitious, money hungry, you know, Wall Street type. Yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. So, um, it makes
26:13
Speaker 1: a really good point here. I've seen it elsewhere too,
26:15
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like something that people have realized
26:17
Speaker 1: in the last few years, maybe last decade or so,
26:21
Speaker 1: and that is that Rolling Stone is possibly the most
26:25
Speaker 1: important mouthpiece for the Boomer generation, and that it was
26:31
Speaker 1: so important. It's entirely possible that things like Woodstock or
26:35
Speaker 1: the Beatles, or the Summer of Love or all the
26:39
Speaker 1: stuff we associate with the beginnings of Boomers and then
26:42
Speaker 1: onward and onward, um, that Rolling Stone amplified it to
26:46
Speaker 1: a way that now we think of those things as
26:48
Speaker 1: like historic events, but they might not be we might
26:52
Speaker 1: think of them as historic events because Rolling Stone amplified it. Yeah,
26:56
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't agree with that, but I do
26:59
Speaker 1: agree that has been a boomer mouthpiece for sure. But
27:02
Speaker 1: I don't think that one could reasonably make an argument
27:06
Speaker 1: that the Beatles wouldn't be the Beatles that had not
27:08
Speaker 1: been for Rolling Stone magazine coverage. No, no, no, I
27:11
Speaker 1: don't think that's the point. I think the point is
27:13
Speaker 1: would would the would we consider the Beatles as having
27:17
Speaker 1: changed the world if Rolling Stone had never been there? Yeah,
27:22
Speaker 1: I definitely think so. That's just my opinion. Um, what
27:26
Speaker 1: about wings Oh I love wings Man Jet give me
27:32
Speaker 1: that all day long. One thing Rolling Stone was definitely
27:35
Speaker 1: at the forefront of, even though they did not create
27:39
Speaker 1: what's called, um, the new journalism. And this was basically
27:44
Speaker 1: when journalism went from kind of anonymous style reporting to
27:49
Speaker 1: putting the writer right in the middle of the story
27:52
Speaker 1: and sometimes the story was even about the writer in
27:56
Speaker 1: the case of a Hunter S. Thompson, who was also
27:58
Speaker 1: at the forefront of new journalism. And it was very
28:02
Speaker 1: uh literary style writing. It was very uh not flowery
28:07
Speaker 1: because that sounds kind of haughty, but just sort of
28:10
Speaker 1: a kind of a higher caliber literary style writing than
28:13
Speaker 1: typical journalism had been. Um, I love it. I've always
28:17
Speaker 1: been a big fan of new journalism. I think it
28:20
Speaker 1: has its place, um and shouldn't be confused with other
28:24
Speaker 1: kinds of journalism. But UM, I've always been a big,
28:26
Speaker 1: big fan. Yeah, it's amazing. UM. And there's so Hunter Thompson.
28:31
Speaker 1: He was so he was so at the forefront of it.
28:33
Speaker 1: He actually spun off his own subdiscipline called gonzo journalism,
28:38
Speaker 1: which is um new journalism to the extreme, like that
28:43
Speaker 1: when you spell extremes starting with an ex kind of thing. Right,
28:46
Speaker 1: Why haven't we done an episode entirely on him yet?
28:50
Speaker 1: Will someday. It just seems very strange for us. But
28:54
Speaker 1: he so, Um Jan Winner did not discover Hunter Thompson. Um.
28:59
Speaker 1: He is actually kind of introduced to the magazine world.
29:02
Speaker 1: He'd already written Hell's Angels in nineteen sixty eight, so
29:05
Speaker 1: he made a name for himself. But the first piece
29:08
Speaker 1: of gonzo journalism is considered um the Kentucky Derby is
29:12
Speaker 1: decadent and depraved. That was commissioned by UM warren Hinkel,
29:18
Speaker 1: who had gone off and started another magazine former Ramparts chief. Yes, exactly.
29:24
Speaker 1: And Warren Hinkel was the genius who put Ralph Steadman
29:27
Speaker 1: and Hunter Thompson together, and they first appeared together in
29:31
Speaker 1: the UM. I can't remember Scanlon's I think is the
29:33
Speaker 1: name of the magazine with the Kentucky Derby is decadent
29:37
Speaker 1: and depraved, and so Joan Winner saw this, He's like,
29:39
Speaker 1: this guy needs to come right for me. Or I
29:42
Speaker 1: think it might have been the other way around. I
29:44
Speaker 1: think Hunter Thompson showed up at Rolling Stones offices and
29:47
Speaker 1: basically demanded that he'd be made a writer for that magazine. Yeah,
29:51
Speaker 1: and was certainly, you know, one of the most famous
29:54
Speaker 1: writers they ever had, along with Um. Cameron Crowe of course,
29:58
Speaker 1: was well known as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
30:01
Speaker 1: I know he got a cover assignment age sixteen brothers
30:07
Speaker 1: and that's what almost famous is based on. Yeah, and
30:10
Speaker 1: he very famously too, was sort of based on his
30:12
Speaker 1: work with the band Eagles. You mean the Eagles. It's Eagles,
30:19
Speaker 1: And I always just like to annoy people by saying Eagles.
30:22
Speaker 1: That's awesome, because it's like, who else was it or
30:26
Speaker 1: might have already talked about this, It's Eagles. And uh oh,
30:29
Speaker 1: Hall of Notates. It's like Daryl Hall has a big
30:33
Speaker 1: be in his bondent about the fact that they're not
30:34
Speaker 1: Hall of Notes. They were always Darryll Hall and John
30:36
Speaker 1: Oates and He's like, people just called us that, and
30:39
Speaker 1: that's not It's not on any of the records there.
30:42
Speaker 1: They all say Darryl Hall and John Oates and the
30:44
Speaker 1: Eagles don him. He's always like, it never was the Eagles,
30:46
Speaker 1: it's Eagles. I'm like, all right, just relax. Another way
30:51
Speaker 1: to annoy people, Chuck is just to play Eagles music.
30:57
Speaker 1: I came back around with the Eagles, did you. Yeah?
30:59
Speaker 1: I mean I took I took off. I love them
31:03
Speaker 1: growing up, and I took off probably twenty years, two
31:07
Speaker 1: solid decades of no Eagles, and then I came back around.
31:10
Speaker 1: I was like, I love this music. What am I doing?
31:12
Speaker 1: You're back off the wagon. Uh So anyway, hunteris Thompson
31:17
Speaker 1: a very famous writer for them, obviously, uh And he
31:20
Speaker 1: did something which other writers in the New journalism school
31:24
Speaker 1: would do, which was including one Tom Wolfe was used
31:28
Speaker 1: the magazine as not a testing ground but as sort
31:31
Speaker 1: of the beginnings of what would become books. By writing
31:34
Speaker 1: these sort of chapter like installments, uh, every issue, and
31:39
Speaker 1: Hunter Thompson did that. Tom Wolfe did that with his
31:42
Speaker 1: early work on what would become The Right Stuff and
31:45
Speaker 1: the Bonfire the Vanities. Yeah, Man, Tom Wolf, I think
31:50
Speaker 1: is my I prefer Tom Wolf the Hunter Thompson these days.
31:53
Speaker 1: I think he's so interesting. Yeah, I just like him more.
31:55
Speaker 1: But Hunter Thompson's um Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
31:59
Speaker 1: was was born out of two different assignments where Rolling
32:03
Speaker 1: Stone sent him to Las Vegas first to cover the
32:05
Speaker 1: MIT four hundred, the cover that right, the police convention
32:10
Speaker 1: on Drugs, that's where the books can from. Was those
32:14
Speaker 1: his submissions for from those two assignments. I think Tom
32:17
Speaker 1: Wolf is the natural graduation point from Like you like
32:21
Speaker 1: Hunter S. Thompson more in your twenties and thirties, maybe, yeah,
32:25
Speaker 1: But I also wrote Electric coolid koolid Asset Tests around
32:28
Speaker 1: the same time, and I was just like, I love
32:31
Speaker 1: Hunter Thompson, but Tom Wolf is just I think, by
32:35
Speaker 1: far the better journalist. Yeah. Electric koolid Asset Tests is
32:38
Speaker 1: the only thing I've read by Tom Wolf. Actually, The
32:41
Speaker 1: Right Stuff is really amazing too. About Tom Wolf. Is
32:45
Speaker 1: he because he's a new journalist. He writes about things
32:49
Speaker 1: where he can be kind of involved or like he's there,
32:51
Speaker 1: or it's really kind of like he puts you in
32:54
Speaker 1: the middle of what's going on sometimes in people's like
32:58
Speaker 1: bedrooms at night, when a guy talking to his wife,
33:01
Speaker 1: and he does it so well that you forget first
33:04
Speaker 1: of all that you're not there, but then you forget
33:05
Speaker 1: that he wasn't there either. Like he's working off interviews
33:09
Speaker 1: sometimes other author's notes, um, and he just gives me
33:13
Speaker 1: he's he's so good at it. You just assumed like
33:16
Speaker 1: he was there for all the stuff, and he wasn't
33:17
Speaker 1: there for any of it. There's like a couple in
33:19
Speaker 1: bed and it just pans over and Tom while sitting
33:21
Speaker 1: there in his searsucker his legs crossed. Very interesting, Can
33:26
Speaker 1: you say that again? Other famous writers early on that
33:31
Speaker 1: went on to have outside careers elsewhere is MTB Skurt Loader,
33:36
Speaker 1: Joe Estra House, uh, screenwriter and filmmaker. What oh Estra
33:42
Speaker 1: House was? He was fatal attraction, right, fatal attraction. It
33:46
Speaker 1: just goes downhill from there, basically instinct. Yeah, Liver, Show
33:51
Speaker 1: Girls Jake of course, but it's weird, like he had
33:54
Speaker 1: a real type his his screenplay was a real like
33:57
Speaker 1: you know, like, hey, you want to see some some boobs,
34:00
Speaker 1: twelve year old kid, come see my movies. Yeah, absolutely. Uh.
34:07
Speaker 1: Lester Bangs from Cream magazine wrote for Rolling Stone, and
34:10
Speaker 1: then of course the legendary journalist being Ben Fong Torres,
34:14
Speaker 1: who was one of the greatest Rolling Stone writers in
34:17
Speaker 1: their in their history for sure, yeah, for sure. And
34:19
Speaker 1: all these people like were legitimately great writers, Um, and
34:23
Speaker 1: they were contributing to this music magazine that really just
34:27
Speaker 1: also had its finger on the pulse of really good
34:29
Speaker 1: journalism too. Yeah. So in that UM article on the
34:34
Speaker 1: from the Atlantic, they do quite a bit of speculating
34:38
Speaker 1: on UM sort of when they think Rolling Stone might
34:41
Speaker 1: have started selling out and become something untrue to its roots.
34:46
Speaker 1: And and they basically talked about even in the seventies
34:48
Speaker 1: and eighties, basically, you know, Jan Winner saw the writing
34:52
Speaker 1: on the wall and said, hey, we can't just be
34:55
Speaker 1: a boomer archive and a nostalgia jam and I want
34:59
Speaker 1: to sell mag magazine. So we're gonna start writing about
35:02
Speaker 1: TV shows and comedians and and uh, I mean they
35:05
Speaker 1: always write about politics, but you know, really expanded beyond
35:09
Speaker 1: the sort of mission statement which was a largely music
35:12
Speaker 1: magazine which also wrote about politics, and it became something
35:16
Speaker 1: else entirely and really became a popular, hugely popular magazine. Yeah,
35:21
Speaker 1: because I mean like Rolling Stone as an institution was
35:26
Speaker 1: just keeping up with the times. Um if it if
35:29
Speaker 1: it was you know, looking backward to like the greatest
35:33
Speaker 1: moments in boomer history. You can thank Yon Winner almost
35:37
Speaker 1: personally for that. And so it's kind of weird as
35:40
Speaker 1: as John Winner, who was like controlling everything. He he
35:43
Speaker 1: had to let the magazine reinvent itself, even though he personally,
35:47
Speaker 1: you know, he you know, I'm sure he did. He
35:49
Speaker 1: went to Studio fifty four and stuff like that in
35:51
Speaker 1: the in the seventies and like, you know, went to
35:54
Speaker 1: Sardes for lunch in the eighties and all that stuff.
35:56
Speaker 1: But he, like I saw an interview with him in
35:58
Speaker 1: two thousand and seventeen and he just casually tosses out
36:02
Speaker 1: the Stones and the Beatles, and it's like, it's two
36:04
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, man, and this guy is still sighting like
36:08
Speaker 1: the Big Three whenever he brings up music from the sixties, right,
36:12
Speaker 1: So it was the Beatles, It was the Beatles, the Stones.
36:18
Speaker 1: I think I automatically questioned, somebody who uses the Stones
36:22
Speaker 1: and that's it, and then um, and I'm trying to
36:26
Speaker 1: find this quote. It was like an interview with mpr um.
36:30
Speaker 1: But oh, the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan. That's another
36:35
Speaker 1: thing too. If you just say Dylan and the Stones,
36:41
Speaker 1: I say both those things, all right, Chuck. But my
36:45
Speaker 1: my point is that Yon Winners frequently accused of what's
36:47
Speaker 1: called rockism, which is we talked about it in our
36:49
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame episode, this idea that
36:52
Speaker 1: rock is white guys using a bass and electric guitar, drums,
36:56
Speaker 1: maybe a rhythm guitar, and a lead singer. Um, they
36:59
Speaker 1: probably use a lot of hair product and like that's
37:01
Speaker 1: rock and nothing else matters. Apparently want John Winner really
37:05
Speaker 1: personifies that. And one of the reasons why people get
37:08
Speaker 1: snubbed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inexplicably
37:12
Speaker 1: is because of him specifically, it seems, yeah, I mean
37:15
Speaker 1: he's is he the head chair or is he just
37:17
Speaker 1: on the board. He's definitely high up in it enough
37:20
Speaker 1: that he can be like, no, I don't even want
37:22
Speaker 1: them on the ballot kind of thing. Yeah, And if
37:24
Speaker 1: you remember our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame episode
37:26
Speaker 1: we talk about snubs, and a lot of people have
37:29
Speaker 1: had very personal beefs with Winner over the years because
37:32
Speaker 1: of this. Um. I'm going to read a couple of
37:34
Speaker 1: choice quotes from his This from the Atlantic article, but
37:38
Speaker 1: from his biography, Winner was a little barbarian who's less
37:44
Speaker 1: for money, drugs, and sex threatened to outpace his razor
37:47
Speaker 1: intellect and turn him into Augustus Gloup falling into the
37:51
Speaker 1: chocolate river of the nineteen sixties. Rolling Stone was an
37:55
Speaker 1: expression of winners pursuit of fame and power a magazine
37:58
Speaker 1: more than occasionally at the mercy of his editors, unembarrassed
38:02
Speaker 1: appetite for stardom and excess, with which made him an
38:06
Speaker 1: object of scorn and parity. And basically he said it
38:10
Speaker 1: was a parable for the age of narcissism. Uh And
38:14
Speaker 1: then one final little bit here. As newsstand sales rose,
38:19
Speaker 1: Winner became hungry for still more sales. By the mid seventies,
38:22
Speaker 1: the focus of Rolling Stone had shifted from what the
38:25
Speaker 1: editors determined to be the best in pop culture to
38:28
Speaker 1: what was measurably the biggest. And I think that was
38:31
Speaker 1: where a lot of people say he lost his way.
38:34
Speaker 1: It was like, well, what's hot, let's just write about that,
38:36
Speaker 1: not what's great. Yeah, I saw there was a dust
38:39
Speaker 1: up years back, I guess in the nineties maybe where
38:41
Speaker 1: one of his music reviewers didn't write a flattering review
38:46
Speaker 1: of who Who Do You In the Blowfish's latest album,
38:49
Speaker 1: and Jon Winner himself killed the review and had assigned
38:53
Speaker 1: it to another writer who wrote a much more favorable review,
38:56
Speaker 1: and they were like, well, you know this, this record
38:58
Speaker 1: company is a huge ever TiSER with Rolling Stone, and
39:02
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's what he just did that, you know.
39:05
Speaker 1: And I think people see him as a founder of
39:07
Speaker 1: this like really hip magazine that was like a voice
39:11
Speaker 1: in a reflection of the times, and it kept reinventing itself,
39:14
Speaker 1: and they want him to be like legit and grounded
39:18
Speaker 1: in like that kind of ethos, and he just wasn't.
39:21
Speaker 1: Like people wanted to pigeonhol him like that, and he
39:23
Speaker 1: just was not like that. I don't know him well enough,
39:26
Speaker 1: and I haven't read his biography to see if he
39:28
Speaker 1: tried to put himself out there like that and that's
39:31
Speaker 1: why people expected him be or if it was just
39:34
Speaker 1: because he was so closely associated with Rolling Stone. People
39:37
Speaker 1: mistakenly assumed things about him and then found out it
39:40
Speaker 1: wasn't actually that way. I don't know which is which.
39:43
Speaker 1: All right, so, uh let's take our second break and
39:45
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of the biggest controversies in Rolling
39:49
Speaker 1: Stone history right after this shock stop stop stop. Okay,
40:15
Speaker 1: we're back, chuck um, and we're here to talk about
40:19
Speaker 1: now some of the low points of Rolling down history.
40:23
Speaker 1: This isn't a hit piece, no, but I mean, I
40:25
Speaker 1: think all of the things that we're going to talk
40:27
Speaker 1: about in the last bit here can be uh classified
40:32
Speaker 1: under one in one big bucket, which is bad journalism,
40:37
Speaker 1: uh lazy journalism, abandoning journalistic integrity for the sake of
40:42
Speaker 1: an article. And it's really a shame that they've done
40:45
Speaker 1: this kind of repeatedly. Yeah, Joe Esther hass is rolling
40:49
Speaker 1: over on top of show Girl right now. Oh boy,
40:55
Speaker 1: that to sight. Uh So, I guess if among these
41:00
Speaker 1: um sort of high profile instances is the article A
41:06
Speaker 1: rape on Campus by sabrina Ardly, which made all kinds
41:11
Speaker 1: of news. It was a story about a gang rape
41:15
Speaker 1: at the University of Virginia at a fraternity house, and
41:19
Speaker 1: the more of the story sort of was investigated. The
41:23
Speaker 1: more it came out that, um, not only were there
41:26
Speaker 1: a lot of big time journalistic flaws, UM, but you know,
41:30
Speaker 1: eventually uh, lawsuits and a full retraction of the story
41:35
Speaker 1: and police investigations that the story was was made up.
41:38
Speaker 1: I mean journalism one oh one flaws like Um. The
41:44
Speaker 1: author Sabrina Ruben eardly did not interview friends, UM, who
41:50
Speaker 1: came out publicly and said, Hey, what this what the
41:52
Speaker 1: story is saying is not what Jackie, the pseudonym of
41:56
Speaker 1: the woman who claimed to have been I think gang
41:58
Speaker 1: raped even eternity house. Um, that's not what she told
42:02
Speaker 1: us that night. There wasn't even a party that night. Um.
42:05
Speaker 1: And apparently it just became more and more clear that
42:09
Speaker 1: the the entire event did not happen, and that the
42:14
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones journalists who they sent out to do this
42:16
Speaker 1: really important story did not didn't do some basic fact
42:21
Speaker 1: checking and as a result just bought the whole thing
42:23
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker. Yeah. And in the end Rolling
42:26
Speaker 1: Stone ended up either losing or settling a bunch of
42:29
Speaker 1: lawsuits with administration at u v A, some of the students,
42:33
Speaker 1: and the fraternity at u v A. UM. It came
42:37
Speaker 1: out during this process that apparently there were text messages
42:41
Speaker 1: that seemed to support the idea that this young woman
42:44
Speaker 1: made this up to gain the affection of a boy
42:48
Speaker 1: on campus. UM. I tried to look as much into
42:51
Speaker 1: it as I could, but um, in the end, they
42:54
Speaker 1: completely retracted the article, which is a really big deal
42:57
Speaker 1: for a major publication to like fully attract and say,
43:00
Speaker 1: all right, this article, we do not stand by it.
43:03
Speaker 1: We're taking it, you know, we have takes these backsease privileges.
43:07
Speaker 1: And they even commission I guess, to their credit, a
43:11
Speaker 1: Columbia University School of Journalism review and published that the
43:17
Speaker 1: findings of that review, which were not kind. No, the
43:20
Speaker 1: review was titled Tisk tisc tisks. But even worse than
43:25
Speaker 1: you know, Rolling Stone losing face and credibility and millions
43:29
Speaker 1: of dollars, is that like this was used as shorthand
43:33
Speaker 1: for people who kind of who were like, we shouldn't
43:37
Speaker 1: really believe you know, rape survivors, and that keeps that
43:41
Speaker 1: has a chilling effect on actual rape survivors from coming
43:45
Speaker 1: forward and like naming their accusers. It was a huge,
43:49
Speaker 1: huge problem that was created by this that you know,
43:53
Speaker 1: I think it would even came up in the Brett
43:55
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh hearing somebody basically used it from that and Tomill
43:59
Speaker 1: cause we talked about it on the courthouse steps. Are
44:02
Speaker 1: you serious? Yeow? So yeah, So it was a big deal.
44:05
Speaker 1: It was a big fall down, and you can really
44:07
Speaker 1: easily point to that as the biggest mistake in the
44:10
Speaker 1: history of Rolling Stone Magazine by far. Yeah. Another big
44:14
Speaker 1: one was an article in two thousand three from Gregory
44:17
Speaker 1: Freeman about what's called bug chasers, which is, um, what
44:23
Speaker 1: appears to be a very fringe thing where gay men
44:27
Speaker 1: want to be HIV positive and and try to have
44:31
Speaker 1: unprotected sex with people they know are HIV positive and
44:36
Speaker 1: basically the same kind of thing, not a lot of
44:39
Speaker 1: fact checking. Um. He interviewed a couple of doctors who
44:43
Speaker 1: he says they they said that they um said it
44:47
Speaker 1: was like of the gay male community are bug chasers,
44:52
Speaker 1: And both of the doctors said, I never said that
44:55
Speaker 1: at all, like I said the opposite. And then the
44:58
Speaker 1: author later came out and said, no, I remember those
45:01
Speaker 1: conversations explicitly, and they're just not admitting to it. And
45:04
Speaker 1: I didn't record the interviews, which you should probably alwaystes do,
45:09
Speaker 1: And so that that was obviously another big sort of
45:12
Speaker 1: black eye on the magazine. Yeah. Um and then so
45:16
Speaker 1: uh and I think it was they were saying new
45:18
Speaker 1: HIV cases come from bug chasers. Yeah, but it's still
45:22
Speaker 1: it's just that's just a ridiculously a ridiculous amount. So chuck. Um,
45:28
Speaker 1: this was in the past, right. There was another big
45:30
Speaker 1: one to another big flub. They sent Sean Penn to
45:33
Speaker 1: interview El Chapo, like the most powerful vicious drug cartel
45:38
Speaker 1: leader in the world. They sent Sean Penn to do it,
45:41
Speaker 1: and Sean Penn sent back a dispatch that was really flattering,
45:45
Speaker 1: really sympathetic, and really one sided. And so they were
45:49
Speaker 1: really criticized for that as well. But that's all in
45:52
Speaker 1: the past. Rolling Stone has refound its footing correct and
45:55
Speaker 1: it's everything. It's all good now. Uh No, apparently not correct. Uh.
46:01
Speaker 1: Just recently, I remember just reading this in my subscription
46:04
Speaker 1: not too long ago. They wrote an article about Taylor
46:07
Speaker 1: Hawkins after he'd like very soon after he died. That Um,
46:11
Speaker 1: a lot of the people in the article, like you know,
46:14
Speaker 1: famous musicians that were quoted, came out and said, wait
46:17
Speaker 1: a minute, this is really taken out of context. I
46:19
Speaker 1: didn't mean this stuff. I didn't say this stuff. The
46:23
Speaker 1: article kind of basically said that the Foo fighters kind
46:26
Speaker 1: of killed him with their schedule and that Dave Grohl
46:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't let up, and it was, you know, had a
46:32
Speaker 1: big reason. It was a big reason why he died,
46:34
Speaker 1: and that was a very recent stain. They also did
46:37
Speaker 1: a hit piece on Marilyn Manson that didn't preside present
46:41
Speaker 1: any of his side of the story. He was accused
46:43
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse by a next girlfriend, Evan rachel Wood,
46:46
Speaker 1: and it was, um, yeah, very one sided, and a
46:49
Speaker 1: lot of people came out and said, like the ones
46:51
Speaker 1: who were quoted were like, I gave them paragraphs and
46:54
Speaker 1: paragraphs of stuff, and they used one sentence, you know,
46:57
Speaker 1: because I was speaking out in defense of Maryland Manson.
47:00
Speaker 1: And um there's also one that was considered having given
47:03
Speaker 1: a moral victory to anti vax ER's. They posted a
47:06
Speaker 1: story about how Oklahoma's emergency rooms were being overrun with
47:11
Speaker 1: people who are having toxic reactions to iver Mechten, who
47:14
Speaker 1: are taking that that cattle d wermer when they caught
47:17
Speaker 1: COVID and apparently it was just fake wrong. Not only that,
47:22
Speaker 1: they ran a picture of people lined up wearing masks
47:25
Speaker 1: and winter coats and the events that they described were
47:29
Speaker 1: took place in summer, so it was just from top
47:31
Speaker 1: to bottom a terrible story. And that seems to be
47:33
Speaker 1: what's going on. And I read an article on UM
47:37
Speaker 1: a website called Saving Country Music and this this UM
47:41
Speaker 1: author basically points to the hiring of Noah Shackman from
47:45
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast to take over, and Noah Shackman said,
47:48
Speaker 1: We're going to start making our journalism more mediate, more visceral,
47:52
Speaker 1: and faster, louder and harder. And this Saving Country Music
47:55
Speaker 1: person is like, that's the opposite of what journalists are
47:59
Speaker 1: supposed to do. When you do things fast and immediate,
48:03
Speaker 1: you're sacrificing like follow ups, getting secondary sources, fact checking,
48:08
Speaker 1: and that seems to be where a lot of the
48:10
Speaker 1: most recent like flubs and um biffs are coming from. Yeah, Like,
48:16
Speaker 1: I think it's that digital journalism thing where you want
48:19
Speaker 1: to be the first to break a story, and that's
48:21
Speaker 1: where it's just a minefield if you try and operate
48:25
Speaker 1: that way, you know, Yeah, but I also get the
48:27
Speaker 1: impression that it's also there it's clickbait. They're fanning the
48:31
Speaker 1: flames of outrage culture and or like at the expense
48:34
Speaker 1: of society. Sanity basically is how this saving country music
48:37
Speaker 1: person put it. And they're trying to save country music. Yeah,
48:41
Speaker 1: but now they had some. It was a really airy, dight, amazing,
48:45
Speaker 1: like really insightful post by Trigger on saving country music
48:49
Speaker 1: dot com. You got anything else? I got nothing else.
48:54
Speaker 1: I mean this could have been a two parter, but
48:56
Speaker 1: that that's a good Rolling Stone Magazine overview. I'm still
48:59
Speaker 1: going to read it, but gonna take it or what
49:00
Speaker 1: it's worth. But get get a subscription to Cream. Well
49:05
Speaker 1: that's it everybody for Rolling Stone. And since Chuck said
49:08
Speaker 1: get a subscription to Cream, of course that means it's
49:10
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Uh. This is a great email
49:16
Speaker 1: from a mom in New Zealand, Kia or a Josh
49:20
Speaker 1: and Chuck. I'm writing you all the way from New
49:22
Speaker 1: Zealand and it's currently ten three pm and I need
49:25
Speaker 1: to thank you. You. My friends are my last bargaining chip,
49:29
Speaker 1: my last resort and more often than not the best
49:32
Speaker 1: thing to get a bit of peace. Sounds like an insult,
49:35
Speaker 1: but let me explain. I have too wonderful, beautiful, enthusiastic,
49:39
Speaker 1: intelligent girls eleven and nine years old and a frequent
49:42
Speaker 1: occurrence in our house is the reluctance to go to bed.
49:46
Speaker 1: Sometimes sleep just eludes them. I get it, it alludes
49:49
Speaker 1: me to However, if all else fails, what about Josh
49:52
Speaker 1: and Chuck. We'll usually get them to where I need
49:54
Speaker 1: them to be, tucked up in usually my bed, with
49:58
Speaker 1: your two comforting voices teaching them about animal science and
50:01
Speaker 1: random things. They settle and relax enough to let old
50:05
Speaker 1: Sandman take them away. Although your content is incredibly interesting,
50:09
Speaker 1: your tones are soothing and comforting, like a big hug
50:13
Speaker 1: to settle into. And you are often my go to
50:15
Speaker 1: when I need a comfort food podcast, and it seems
50:18
Speaker 1: you have the same effect on my girls. Keep being awesome.
50:21
Speaker 1: You're very much appreciated from a tired mom Bethany. And
50:25
Speaker 1: I wrote Bethany back and asked if she wanted to
50:28
Speaker 1: name her girls, and she said absolutely that is Alison Page.
50:32
Speaker 1: And she had just written me back after I believe
50:35
Speaker 1: using our show to get Page to sleep. Very nice.
50:39
Speaker 1: Alison Page also known as Thing one and Thing two.
50:42
Speaker 1: That's right and Alison Page give mom a break, cooperated bedtime,
50:48
Speaker 1: let's get kids, get it together kids? Well, thank you?
50:53
Speaker 1: Who was the mom? Bethany Thank you very much, Bethany.
50:56
Speaker 1: That was very nice to let us know that, and
50:58
Speaker 1: I'm glad we could help out. And hello to Alice
51:01
Speaker 1: and Paige and everybody. They're down under. Uh she from
51:05
Speaker 1: New Zealand, New Zealand, Okay, Unders exactly. UM. If you
51:10
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, like Bethany did,
51:12
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, even from New Zealand.
51:14
Speaker 1: It'll get here, wrap it up, spanked on the bottom,
51:17
Speaker 1: and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
51:20
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
51:25
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
51:28
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
51:31
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.