I’m not sure if this is the right forum for this thread, and if it’s not the mods can feel free to move it.
Anyway I saw an interesting article about this today:
http://gawker.com/5574696/rolling-stone-and-the-plight-of-the-not+quite+good+enough-magazine
Every once in a great while they’ll manage to run a piece that enters the national dialogue. But those instances are pretty rare.
Even looking at this particular issue gives you an idea of their priorities. Lady Gaga gets top billing with the McChrystal story, perhaps the most important piece they’ve run in more than a decade, way at the bottom. I do give them credit, however, for having a cover (Lady Gaga wielding dual machine guns) that at least somewhat fits in with the theme of the McChrystal piece, though I can imagine the look of surprise on someone buying the issue simply for that story and seeing that picture.
Anyway what are your thoughts here.
Did they know the McChrystal piece would be important before they printed it? I’m sure they’ve had equally important things in recent years, although I am at a loss for which right now. They are a music magazine, but they almost always have a political article which is rather lengthy, from the ones I’ve read. Matt Taibbi usually writes those.
Btw: those aren’t really machine guns.
See, if I was going to write an article about how Rolling Stone’s business model was failiing, I would take a few minutes and look up how well their business was actually doing. Like this NYT’s article, which mentions that while their numbers have dipped over the last few months, they’re still up since 2008. And its apparenlty grown since 2002-2008, form 1.25 million to 1.4.
Agreed they farked up the roll out of the McChrystal story, but in general they’re model seems to be at least allowing them to hold steady in a market that hasn’t been kind to news magazines.
I’m unsure of the viability of Gawker’s model for publishing handwaving arguments that are vaguely plausable, but contradicted by easily obtainable empirical evidence.
Was the McChrystal story actually good writing?
In addition to the McChrystal story (which, whether or not was good writing, was certainly a major get), Rolling Stone ran a three-part series in 2003 called Killer Elite, which led to a book and miniseries called Generation Kill. The original story won a National Magazine Award.
So I’d say that, yes, it’s still relevant. Not that I subscribe, though. At one point within the last decade, I subscribed to half a dozen magazines (including Rolling Stone) at the same time and also bought the Sunday New York Times each week. But I let each subscription lapse and no longer buy any newspapers.
I agree that there’s value in the investigative aspect of the McChrystal story and occasional other things RS may have done.
But you’re citing two items in eight years as a sign of relevance? Pretty low threshold.
As I said, I don’t read the magazine regularly, so there may be other relevant articles. It is notable, though, that these significant articles appeared in a music magazine.
It is surviving, so it’s at least as relevent as Readers Digest. Perhaps it is the shit-rag of a young generation.
This needs to be repeated. Rolling Stone is not a political magazine or even a magazine that is overly serious or scholarly. They have one article an issue on a political or current events topic and the other 90-100 pages are devoted to Lady Gaga’s penchant for nudity, the latest White Stripes spinoff band and today’s sucky movies.
The fact that a few of these political articles escape into the world at large is neither here nor there. Rolling Stone is still just a music magazine.
They would argue to the death to disagree with you and cite all the politically-charged work they’ve published - and make a decent case of it - but I tend to take your POV in terms of the value I am looking for from the magazine. I want to hear about the latest White Stripes spinoff more than I am looking for deep intellectual political discourse.
Having said that, I will also cite Matt Taibbi’s work as a muckracker on the Great Meltdown-Recession. His coinage of the nickname “giant vampire squid” sucking the money and life out of the globe - for Goldman Sachs - got some traction in the blogosphere…
But their one political/current event article is often in depth and quite good. They did an excellent article on Kansas’ conservative senator Sam Brownback a few years ago. (I can’t link to it because I’m at work and they block Rolling Stone as “entertainment.”)
Except that, as a music magazine, it was eclipsed by Creem around 1971. (Crawdaddy was already the favorite for the serious intellectual types.) Rolling Stone does cover the mainstream music biz, but its main worth to me has been its occasional journalistic excellence. Like publishing the works of Hunter S Thompson.
(Alas, Creem is long gone. I’m not sure what publications the whippersnappers prefer–maybe something on That There Internet Thingie.)
Pitchfork Media, which is actually a really shitty website as far as music criticism goes, but its what the hipsters love.
It’s a magazine about the popular music scene. Was it ever meant to be “relevant” in the way the OP means?
Nevertheless . . . to the Baby Boomers . . . I’m flashing on Stephen King’s Firestarter – where, at the end, the dying Andrew McGee tells Charlie to take her superpowered-mutant-bred-by-government-mad-scientists story to somebody – but not the government, or anybody with the government’s ideas. So she goes to Rolling Stone. That’s relevance for ya! 
I’m not one to defend Pitchfork, but I doubt most people go there for music criticism, as opposed to just music reviews. I think of music criticism of more along the lines of the stuff Rolling Stone covers in addition to their music reviews, like deep discussions on Lady Gaga’s penchant for nudity, which Pitchfork doesn’t get into much. Editorializing, in a nutshell. But maybe that’s just me.
And yes, that’s where the kids go nowadays.
Every time I see that rag, I mean, mag, Bob Dylan is on the cover. As long as he’s around for them to fellate, they’ll be around. As for relevancy, I guess that’s in the eyes of the beholder.
Sorry, I use criticism and reviews interchangeably. I guess they’re somewhat different, but either way, I don’t have much love for Pitchfork’s review process either. Bunch of self absorbed wankers if you ask me.
No argument here