History of Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner. The first issue was released on November 9, 1967. In the first issue, Wenner explained that the title of the magazine referred to: the 1950 blues song, "Rollin' Stone" recorded by Muddy Waters, the rock and roll band the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan's hit single "Like a Rolling Stone".

 

During the 1980s, the magazine began to shift towards being a general entertainment magazine. Music was still a dominant topic, but there was increasing coverage of celebrities from television, films and the pop culture of the day.

Just by looking at the covers you can tell that Rolling Stone have caused a lot of controversy and have come up against a lot of criticism yet still remain one of the most well recognised, famous and influential magazines available worldwide.

Examples of rolling stone covers :

                                   

First edition of rolling stone magazine

                                                           





 

 

 

 

I like how the rolling stone makes the cover image the centre of focus and the person in the image looks directly into the camera because I feel like this would entice the audience and be more visually striking than if they were looking away. On all of these front covers the people have serious looks on their face and I feel like this reflects the tone of the whole magazine. Rolling Stone isn't just about music and features serious political articles and it would be misleading to feature smiling, bubbly images like some younger magazines feature.

This is the 2016 readership of rolling stone. As shown, the magazine is mostly read by men of 25-34. The readership itself isn't extremely high for the big reputation it has a magazine. This may show that the use of magazines is decreasing and once popular magazines are ultimately suffering amongst the majority of young people. However the average physical sales of Rolling Stoner has decreased but digital downloads are on the rise