{"id":10441,"date":"2017-11-11T03:04:38","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T03:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10441"},"modified":"2017-11-13T03:40:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T03:40:24","slug":"the-magazine-that-inspired-rolling-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-magazine-that-inspired-rolling-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"The magazine that inspired Rolling Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Richardson<\/a>, San Francisco State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine has arrived, and not without fanfare. Joe Hagan\u2019s biography<\/a> of co-founder Jann Wenner appeared in October to stellar reviews, and earlier this month, HBO aired Alex Gibney\u2019s documentary film<\/a> about the magazine\u2019s history. Wenner\u2019s announcement<\/a> that he was planning to sell his company\u2019s stake in Rolling Stone also prompted a flurry of retrospective tributes.<\/p>\n

Conceived during the Summer of Love in 1967, Rolling Stone was always a creature of the San Francisco counterculture. From the outset, the magazine touted Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and other San Francisco bands. Well before that, co-founder Ralph J. Gleason was featuring the Haight-Ashbury\u2019s vibrant music scene in his San Francisco Chronicle column. <\/p>\n

But Rolling Stone\u2019s identity can also be traced to two other sources: Berkeley\u2019s culture of dissent and Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker. <\/p>\n

The Berkeley influence was strong and direct. The magazine\u2019s early staff writers were steeped in Berkeley\u2019s ardent campus activism, and their views on politics, drugs and music informed the magazine\u2019s coverage. Wenner wrote a music column for the student newspaper and covered the free speech movement for a local radio station. Even more significant for Wenner, perhaps, was the example of Gleason, who combined an impressive body of music criticism with public support for student activists. Wenner spent hours at Gleason\u2019s Berkeley home, soaking up his insights on music and journalism.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone\u2019s Berkeley roots were important, but the Ramparts influence ran even deeper<\/a>. Ramparts was by no means a hippie magazine, but its rebellious spirit, flair for publicity and professional design would all leave their mark on Wenner and Gleason\u2019s fledgling magazine. <\/p>\n

A bomb in every issue<\/h2>\n

Founded in 1962 as a Catholic literary quarterly, Ramparts initially ran articles by Thomas Merton<\/a>, John Howard Griffin<\/a> and other Catholic intellectuals. But when a young Warren Hinckle became editor in 1964, he converted Ramparts into a monthly, shifted its focus to politics and hired Dugald Stermer as art director. <\/p>\n

Hinckle also recruited Robert Scheer, a former graduate student at UC Berkeley\u2019s Center for Chinese Studies, to write about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Scheer and his colleagues challenged U.S. government pronouncements about the war and routinely lampooned the mainstream media\u2019s Vietnam coverage. <\/p>\n

Once Hinckle, Stermer and Scheer joined forces, Ramparts achieved liftoff. It adopted a cutting-edge design, forged links to the Black Panther Party, exposed CIA activities and published the diaries of Che Guevara and staff writer Eldridge Cleaver<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Ramparts photo-essay, \u201cThe Children of Vietnam<\/a>,\u201d persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the war, and the title of a Time magazine article about Ramparts, \u201cA Bomb in Every Issue<\/a>,\u201d described the muckraker\u2019s explosive impact. In 1966, Ramparts earned the George Polk Award for excellence in magazine journalism, and its circulation climbed to almost 250,000. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n From left to right: Ramparts magazine editor Warren Hinckle, assistant managing editor Sol Stern and writer Robert Scheer.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ramparts also became a seedbed for Rolling Stone. Gleason, who was a contributing editor at Ramparts, secured a job for Wenner at the magazine\u2019s spinoff newspaper, the Sunday Ramparts. While there, Wenner picked up layout ideas from Stermer and encountered the work of Hunter S. Thompson, whose bestselling book about the Hells Angels appeared in 1967. Wenner also learned the value of showmanship from the free-spending Hinckle, who frequently echoed playwright George M. Cohan\u2019s motto<\/a> \u201cWhatever you do, kid, always serve it with a little dressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, Hinckle played an indirect role in the creation of Rolling Stone. Gleason had planned to write about the Summer of Love at Ramparts, but Hinckle ran his own cover article, \u201cA Social History of the Hippies<\/a>,\u201d in the March 1967 issue without informing him. A furious Gleason resigned from the magazine, and Wenner lost his job when Hinckle shut down the Sunday Ramparts. That summer, the two men began working on their own publication. By alienating Gleason, laying off Wenner and demonstrating that a \u201cradical slick<\/a>\u201d had broad appeal, Hinckle cleared the way for Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

Despite reaching a broad audience, Ramparts never stabilized its finances. After running through two private fortunes, it filed for bankruptcy in 1969. Hinckle left to start Scanlan\u2019s Monthly, where he paired Thompson with illustrator Ralph Steadman<\/a> to cover the Kentucky Derby; that article<\/a> is now considered the first example of gonzo journalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The voice of its generation<\/h2>\n

Rolling Stone\u2019s first issue appeared in November 1967, but the magazine didn\u2019t come into its own until 1969. <\/p>\n

In December of that year, the notorious Altamont free concert devolved into lethal chaos<\/a>. Several Rolling Stone staff writers witnessed the mayhem, much of which was attributed to Hells Angels, but other media outlets missed the story. Gleason insisted that the magazine cover Altamont as if it were World War II, and its \u201cLet It Bleed<\/a>\u201d issue landed Rolling Stone a National Magazine Award for Specialized Journalism. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Rolling Stone writer Hunter S. Thompson takes notes while listening to testimony at a trial in West Palm Beach, Flaorida in 1982.<\/span>
\n Ray Fairall\/AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Having established itself as \u201cthe voice of its generation<\/a>,\u201d Rolling Stone continued its ascent. After Scanlan\u2019s tanked in 1971, Wenner recruited Thompson and Steadman, published their most notable work, and turned Thompson into a cultural celebrity. Wenner also hired Annie Liebovitz as the magazine\u2019s chief photographer in 1973. <\/p>\n

Gleason died of a heart attack in 1975<\/a>, the same year Ramparts closed its doors for good. Two years later, Rolling Stone decamped for New York City. Although Rolling Stone\u2019s reputation waxed and waned for decades, it retained its ability to break big stories. In 2008, staff writer Matt Taibbi\u2019s political commentary earned Rolling Stone a National Magazine Award, and his 2010 takedown of Goldman Sachs<\/a> rattled Wall Street. Since then, the magazine has collected two Polk Awards for stories on the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. <\/p>\n

Rolling Stone\u2019s overall record is decidedly mixed. (Consider, for example, its misbegotten account<\/a> of rape culture at the University of Virginia, which appeared in 2014.) But as one Ramparts staff writer observed<\/a> after that magazine perished, \u201cWhen you look back on it, where else would those articles appear? The Saturday Evening Post?\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheSo it is with Rolling Stone: No other rock magazine could have matched its coverage of the Manson family or the Patty Hearst saga. For all its flaws, Rolling Stone accomplished a rare feat. Like Ramparts, it created a distinctive niche in the national media ecology; unlike its precursor, it maintained that niche for five decades.<\/p>\n

Peter Richardson<\/a>, Coordinator, American Studies, San Francisco State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Richardson, San Francisco State University The 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine has arrived, and not without fanfare. Joe Hagan\u2019s biography of co-founder Jann Wenner appeared in October to stellar reviews, and earlier this month, HBO aired Alex Gibney\u2019s documentary film about the magazine\u2019s history. Wenner\u2019s announcement that he was planning to sell his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[3488,191,535,308,3487,2175,533],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10442,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10441\/revisions\/10442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}