Rolling Stone
Almost two years before the Saturday Evening Post —"America's magazine"—first folded in 1969, a small magazine named Rolling Stone began in a San Francisco print shop. With the look of an underground newspaper, Rolling Stone targeted a young readership that was attuned to the counterculture. Whereas the Post conveyed a consensus within American culture, Rolling Stone had more in common with Playboy's approach as the embodiment of a particular lifestyle. At its height, Rolling Stone's cover became an icon in itself—for many, it served as a cultural barometer. At different points in its history, the biweekly had been regarded as a daring anti-establishment voice, or a slick mainstream media product. The magazine's one main constant was its music coverage. Rolling Stone deemed rock musicians and their music to be newsworthy, which helped to legitimize one of the key elements of 1960s' oppositional culture. The inception of Rolling Stone marked the changes in U.S. culture following the 1960s: one such change held that the personal—one's lifestyle, even the kind of music one listened to—is political.
Jann Wenner, editor and publisher, was a 21-year-old dropout from Berkeley when he began Rolling Stone with only $7500 in borrowed capital. " Rolling Stone is not just about music," wrote Wenner in the inaugural issue, "but also about the things and attitudes that the music embraces." The magazine's name was taken from a song, by blues legend Muddy Waters, that borrowed its title from an old proverb: "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Rolling Stone's look—newsprint on a quarterfold format—was of an underground newspaper, although that was the furthest thing from Wenner's mind.
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