KEEP ON ROLLING

More than half a century after its founding, Rolling Stone magazine—like many people featured on its pages—has stayed relevant through reinvention. Robin Parker talks to chief executive officer Gus Wenner, son of founder Jann, about how a publishing saga achieved near mythical status.

Wenner likes disruption as much as the next digital native, but he wants to make one thing clear: Rolling Stone—the magazine started by his dad, Jann, in 1967—is in no danger of ceasing publication anytime soon. Through a laser-sharp focus on new media, the 31-year-old CEO has successfully flipped the title’s print/digital model in the decade since he joined from Brown University. Today, almost two-thirds of the brand’s 60 million monthly readers are accessing it primarily online, with social-media channels alone reaching 20 million people.

But to Gus, the print magazine still cuts to the “heart and soul” of what Rolling Stone stands for. “The front cover allows us to make a statement on a global level, every single month,” he says, citing striking images of Harry Styles, Adele and YouTube sensation MrBeast as examples. “We can create something potentially iconic that I don’t think you can really get with digital. In my mind, we will always keep it going, even 10, 20 years down the road—it’s not the focal point of our business, but I don’t see it going away.”

When he arrived as an intern—albeit one whose dad ran the show—he found a heritage brand at a crossroads. The counterculture magazine, in which Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs and Tom Wolfe were once let loose to pontificate for tens of thousands of words on rock, sex, drugs and the death of the American dream, was being usurped by attitude-heavy upstarts such as Vice. And it had never been so unprofitable.

Fiercely protective of what the title stood for— and could still deliver—Wenner reasoned that going for broke was the only option when it came to capturing the imaginations of a generation that increasingly saw the world via a screen. “I was really young and didn’t know much but I cared about Rolling Stone’s history, its place in the world and its mission—and I cared that it survived and thrived,” he says. “It became clear that we were just on the sidelines, not leading the charge, with such a very print-centric culture.”

The young Gus, fresh out of college, was now head of digital, ripping up the rule book and telling a bunch of rock-and-roll journalists to change their ways. Was there pushback? “It was definitely a challenge from a personnel standpoint to build new teams, to focus on digital and figure out who was ready to be part of a very aggressive push in that direction and who wasn’t,” he admits.

“But there was so much talent and so many incredibly smart editors and journalists and researchers. We had to be aggressive and make some hard decisions. It wasn’t easy for one second, nor was it fun at every moment, but it was necessary. We led the charge in transitioning from being a print-based brand to a real multimedia company, but very quickly.”

Within three years, revenues and unique page views had more than doubled. Gus enjoyed a quick ascent from head of digital to president and chief operating officer when Rolling Stone was sold to Penske Media in 2017. New revenue streams—including e-commerce, TV and film documentaries, podcasts, experiential marketing and even the Life Is Beautiful festival—have brought the brand closer to its audience and spread the financial risk, helping the title to enjoy its most profitable year in 2021.

Gus Wenner on “the Music That Made Me”

“My mum used to have music playing 24/7—I would wake up in the middle of the night to get water, and it was playing throughout the hallways. She would have this rotation of Sam Cooke, Ben E. King, Van Morrison and Lee Scratch Perry. I’d hear them in my sleep sometimes!”

“Ben and Sam remain two of my favorites, and reggae is some of my favorite music, period. Bob Dylan is my ultimate hero—he’s the greatest American writer of the last 100 years for sure. Skateboarding really had a big musical impact on me—that’s where I first heard Tommy James and the Shondells. And Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z opened my world up to hip-hop, and I also love electronic music and country.”

“There’s nothing quite like being moved by a song. For me, the best music carries a deep political message and really resonates and mobilizes people: Think about Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ If I were to have one wish for music today, it would be that there would be more of that and more potent music that comes out with that kind of message.”

Above: Woodstock, the festival held in 1969 on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, is naturally intertwined with Rolling Stone’s history.

Right: The issue of the magazine released in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

Milestones in Rolling Stone’s Extraordinary History

1967 Jann Wenner, just 21 years old, founds the magazine in San Francisco for $7,500— the first issue’s cover star is John Lennon.

1971 Title establishes “gonzo” journalism with the Hunter S. Thompson series “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,” later a cult book and Hollywood movie.

1973 Publishes Tom Wolfe’s “The Brotherhood of the Right Stuff,” which spawned his acclaimed book about the space race, The Right Stuff.

1974 The magazine reaches a circulation of 325,000—a figure that will hit 1.25 million in 1998.

Right: Annie Leibovitz’s shot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their apartment at the Dakota building on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Below: Lizzo, on the cover of an edition in which she “talks about dealing with haters, heartbreak and the body-positivity movement.”

1984 Jann Wenner offers Tom Wolfe $200,000 to write a serialized piece of fiction—it would later spawn the best-selling novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.

1990 Supermodel Claudia Schiffer appears on the cover of Rolling Stone’s first annual “Hot Issue.”

2000 Cameron Crowe releases his movie Almost Famous, which draws on his experiences writing for Rolling Stone in the 1970s.

2006 Title publishes its 1,000th issue, featuring a 3-Dhologram cover that cost around $1 million to produce.

2023 Crowds gather outside the Rolling Stone office building in New York City to protest against the magazine’s decision not to include Celine Dion on its list of “The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.”

It hasn’t been plain sailing, though. Buying a 50 percent share of Us Weekly from Disney had saddled the business with debts, and Gus led the sale of that brand and Men’s Journal to American Media Inc.

And then came his father’s heart attack, which was followed by triple-bypass surgery. “Family and business are so closely woven together here, and at a young age it fell on my shoulders to solve some pretty existential threats to the business,” he reflects. “The stakes were as high as they come—on top of balancing my dad’s health, company morale and day-to-day business. On paper, I was not equipped for this, but I thrived on it. For all the stress, I realized how much I love Rolling Stone, how important I believe the work is—and also that this is probably what I’m meant to do. My dad once said that nothing would make him happier than to put his baby in the hands of his baby.”

None of this means that Wenner junior was ever made to believe that running the show was his birthright. “I didn’t start with any intention of owning [it] one day—I didn’t feel I deserved it. Dad, a shrewd man, said, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ I said, ‘Fine—I just want to learn and see what I can do.’ ’’

Jann Wenner was no Logan Roy: Beyond this playful anecdote, Gus does not paint a picture of Succession-style power plays behind the throne. But letting go of his baby wasn’t easy for Jann, who did not so much blur the line between family and work as collapse it entirely. To colleagues, advertisers, publicists, rock stars, writers and presidents, he was Rolling Stone Was that intimidating for young Gus?

“I felt incredibly fortunate, to be honest,” he says. “It was always clear to me that to my dad, it was always about the deeper message behind it all—his aspirations for a more progressive world and his actual love for music and art.” Physical proximity to his father in the office helped Gus get things done quickly: a factor in the brand’s evolution.

As the baton is passed, Gus reflects: “The direction it took wasn’t what either of us expected, but he’s unbelievably happy and proud, and having him as a mentor and resource . . . I can’t even quantify how important that’s been for me. That’s not to say we always agreed on everything over the years, or still agree on everything today, but he’s brilliant, and learning from him is a great honor. And on a personal level, it’s allowed us to spend so much time together, which is amazing.”

Wenner senior recently published a memoir called, perhaps inevitably, Like a Rolling Stone Gus describes it fondly as “a well-deserved victory lap.” Reading some of his dad’s hair-raising exploits begs the question: Do you feel jealous that you didn’t get to work in the anything-goes days of the late ’60s and ’70s? “A hundred percent,” he says, laughing. “I mean, the music world is probably 100 times more boring than it was—the whole world is! My mum and dad were in San Francisco in the eye of the storm.”

But he’s not one to wallow. Rolling Stone’s biggest demographic today is ages 18 to 34, and there are endless documentaries to make, festivals to stage, bold new covers to shoot—and new frontiers of journalism to conquer.

“There are unbelievable things happening now in this connected culture,” he says. “One fear of mine is to get too subsumed by any one corporate culture or way of doing things. Rolling Stone has always been defined on some level as a little bit rebellious, a bit of an outsider, and those things can change with the times.” He grins, his mind racing. “Today alone, I’m thinking about four different projects I’m really excited about.” A pause. “There’s still a lot of fun to be had.”

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