RIP Rolling Stone
So Rolling Stone is going to be a "laddie" book. Not that anyone has read it in years--that's why the former visionary Jann Wenner is making the change--but it's still kind of a shame. The new editor, one Ed Needham, late of a deliberately dumb mag called FHM, doesn't share the blogging ethos--he doesn't see the Web as a writer's medium. "Television, movies, the Internet, they're all visual mediums, and I don't think people have time to sit down and read," he told the New York Times.
Wrong, at least about the Internet. Needham may make zillions for the odious Wenner--but reading and writing are empowered by the Web, not endangered by it. Sure, the Web does make it easy to find pics of Britney--so why buy Rolling Stone for them?
I picked up an RS this spring, when an airport shop had nothing else to read, and found a brilliant article by TD Allman on our failed drug war in Colombia (I couldn't find the link on the RS site--hmm, what does that tell us?). Print magazines are great for that kind of long-form journalism. Or at least they used to be.
9:15:21 AM 
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