The first issue of Rolling Stone hit newsstands on the 9th of November 1967, featuring John Lennon wearing a Brodie helmet from the film How I Won the War, a visual that signaled a radical shift in how music journalism would be presented. Jann Wenner, a 23-year-old college dropout, and music critic Ralph J. Gleason founded the magazine in San Francisco with a borrowed $7,500 from family and the parents of Wenner's future wife, Jane Schindelheim. The publication was not merely a music magazine but a cultural manifesto that declared itself to be about the attitudes music embraced, distinguishing itself from the radical underground newspapers of the era by maintaining traditional journalistic standards while covering the hippie counterculture. The cover price was 25 cents, and the magazine was published bi-weekly in a tabloid format with black ink text and a single color highlight that changed with each edition. The name itself was a nod to the Bob Dylan song Rolling Stone and the band The Rolling Stones, though Wenner initially attributed the title solely to Dylan's hit single at Gleason's suggestion. The magazine's early slogan, All the news that fits, was lifted from a parody in the Columbia Daily Spectator and first appeared in 1969, setting a tone that would define its relationship with the mainstream press for decades to come.
Gonzo Journalism And The Altamont Tragedy
Hunter S. Thompson transformed the magazine's political section into a vehicle for gonzo journalism, publishing his most famous work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within its pages in 1971 and remaining a contributing editor until his death in 2005. The magazine's reputation was cemented by its coverage of the Altamont Free Concert on the 21st of January 1970, where the killing of Meredith Hunter was documented in a story that won a Specialized Journalism award at the National Magazine Awards in 1971. This event marked a turning point where the magazine moved from celebrating the peace and love of the 1960s to documenting the dark underbelly of the counterculture. In the same year, Rolling Stone published a 30,000-word feature on Charles Manson by David Dalton and David Felton, including an interview with Manson while he was in the L.A. County Jail awaiting trial, which won the magazine its first National Magazine Award. The magazine also covered the Patty Hearst abduction odyssey four years later, establishing itself as a publication that did not shy away from the most disturbing and complex stories of the era. The magazine began running the photographs of Annie Leibovitz in 1970, and by 1973 she became its chief photographer, with her images appearing on more than 140 covers, creating a visual identity that was as provocative as the writing. The magazine moved its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City in 1977, with Wenner declaring that San Francisco had become a cultural backwater, a decision that reflected the shifting center of American cultural power.
In the 1980s, Rolling Stone shifted its focus to become more of an entertainment magazine, increasing its coverage of celebrities, films, and pop culture while still maintaining music as the main topic. The magazine hired an advertising agency in 1985 to refocus its image under the series Perception/Reality, which compared Sixties symbols to those of the Eighties and led to an increase in advertising revenue and pages. Tom Wolfe serialized his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities in the magazine from July 1984 to August 1985, a project that began as a four-part series but was later revised and published as a book in 1987. The magazine also published a four-part series by Wolfe titled Post-Orbital Remorse in 1973, about the depression that some astronauts experienced after having been in space, which was part of a seven-year project that eventually led to The Right Stuff. The magazine began releasing its annual Hot Issue in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, it changed its format to appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. This shift led to criticism that the magazine was emphasizing style over substance, a charge that would follow it for decades. The magazine spent $1 million on the 3-D hologram cover of the special 1,000th issue on the 18th of May 2006, displaying multiple celebrities and other personalities, a move that highlighted its willingness to experiment with new formats and technologies.
The Resurgence And The Financial Meltdown
After years of declining readership, the magazine experienced a major resurgence of interest and relevance with the work of two young journalists in the late 2000s, Michael Hastings and Matt Taibbi. Rob Sheffield also joined from Spin, and in 2005, Dana Leslie Fields, former publisher of Rolling Stone, who had worked at the magazine for 17 years, was an inaugural inductee into the Magazine Hall of Fame. In 2009, Taibbi unleashed an acclaimed series of scathing reports on the financial meltdown of the time, famously describing Goldman Sachs as a great vampire squid. The magazine caused a controversy in the White House by publishing in the July 2010 issue an article by Michael Hastings entitled The Runaway General, which quoted criticism by General Stanley A. McChrystal about Vice President Joe Biden and other Administration members of the White House, leading to McChrystal's resignation. In 2010, Taibbi documented illegal and fraudulent actions by banks in the foreclosure courts, after traveling to Jacksonville, Florida and sitting in on hearings in the courtroom, with his article Invasion of the Home Snatchers documenting attempts by the judge to intimidate a homeowner fighting foreclosure. The magazine published its first Spanish-language section on Latino music and culture in the issue dated the 22nd of November 2012, and in 2012, Taibbi emerged as an expert on the Libor scandal through his coverage of the topic.
Ownership Changes And The Digital Age
In September 2016, Advertising Age reported that Wenner was in the process of selling a 49% stake of the magazine to a company from Singapore called BandLab Technologies, with the new investor having no direct involvement in the editorial content of the magazine. In September 2017, Wenner Media announced that the remaining 51% of Rolling Stone magazine was up for sale, and in December 2017, Penske Media acquired the remaining stake from Wenner Media. It became a monthly magazine from the July 2018 issue, and on the 31st of January 2019, Penske acquired BandLab's 49% stake in Rolling Stone, gaining full ownership of the magazine. In January 2021, a Chinese edition of the magazine was launched, while in September 2021, Rolling Stone launched a dedicated UK edition in conjunction with Attitude magazine publisher Stream Publishing. The new British Rolling Stone launched into a marketplace which already featured titles like Mojo and BandLab Technologies's monthly music magazine Uncut, with the first issue having a choice of three cover stars including music acts Bastille and Sam Fender, as well as No Time To Die actor Lashana Lynch. In February 2022, Rolling Stone announced the acquisition of Life Is Beautiful, saying that live events are an integral part of Rolling Stone's future, and in 2023 Rolling Stone was nominated for its first-ever Emmy award in the Outstanding Interactive Media category for its investigation into The DJ and the War Crimes.
The Controversies That Shook The Foundation
The magazine has faced numerous controversies, including the 2003 article Bug Chasers which claimed that homosexuals who intentionally sought to be infected with HIV accounted for 25% of new cases each year, a claim that physicians cited in the article later denied. In 2005, the article Deadly Immunity by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attracted criticism for quoting material out of context, and Rolling Stone eventually amended the story with corrections in response to these and other criticisms. The August 2013 Rolling Stone cover, featuring then-accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, drew widespread criticism for glamorizing terrorism, and was called a slap in the face to the great city of Boston, with Boston mayor Thomas Menino sending a letter to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner calling the cover ill-conceived. The 2014 story A Rape on Campus about an alleged gang rape on the campus of the University of Virginia was retracted in 2015 after an investigation uncovered journalistic failure, leading to a $3 million defamation lawsuit from UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo and a $1.65 million settlement with the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. In 2016, Rolling Stone commissioned Sean Penn to write a feature on Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, which was characterized by the Associated Press as long and rambling and prompted a discussion about the magazine's ethical standards, with Penn later saying his article had failed.
The Global Reach And Cultural Impact
As of 2025, 15 international editions of Rolling Stone are in operation, with the first international edition of the magazine being Rolling Stone Australia launched in 1969 and the latest being Rolling Stone Philippines launched in print in 2025. The magazine has been referenced in popular culture, from George Harrison's 1975 song This Guitar Can't Keep from Crying to the 2000 film Almost Famous, which centers on a teenage journalist writing for the magazine in the early 1970s while covering the fictional band Stillwater. The song The Cover of Rolling Stone by Shel Silverstein satirizes success in the music business, and the title track of Pink Floyd's album The Final Cut features the line Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone. The magazine has also been the subject of legal and ethical scrutiny, with the 2023 arrest of ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek for transporting child pornography, which Rolling Stone initially broke without mentioning the child sexual abuse images that led to the investigation. The magazine has also been the subject of criticism for its generational bias toward the 1960s and 1970s, with rock critic Jim DeRogatis publishing a thorough critique of the magazine's lists in a book called Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics.