"Two years ago, Michael showed up on our doorstep," said Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates of his star writer Michael Hastings. The viability of the profile Mr. Hastings had pitched, Mr. Bates said speaking in retrospect, "really depends on what kind of access you can get."The audience erupted in laughter.
A crowd was Read More
RollingStone.com senior editor Doree Shafrir has been named executive editor of BuzzFeed, the company announced today. She will oversee the social news site's expanding pop culture coverage, joining CEO Jonah Peretti, managing editor Scott Lamb and editor in chief Ben Smith (whose politics team is currently enjoying a glittery debut on the GOP campaign trail) at the top of the masthead. Read More
Larry David's publicly wondering if he has another season of Curb Your Enthusiasm left in him--again. In a Rolling Stone cover story previewed this morning in the Daily News, Mr. David also says he'd move to New York full-time were he able to golf year-round (sounds very much like a typical Rolling Stone Read More
Justin Bieber's forthcoming Rolling Stone cover has already merited a correction; the teen star's stance on abortion, definitely an important thing about which to know, is not quite as absolutist as it initially appeared! The quote from the initial interview, via Popdust:
"I really don't believe in abortion," Bieber says. "It's like killing a baby?" Read More
It's no surprise that when a magazine captures the electric bombast that is Lady Gaga, they'll have a talked-about picture on the cover.
And with this buzz comes monumental sales: Memo Pad has rounded up the Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers from nearly all of 2010 and found that Rolling Stone and Cosmopolitan owe their Read More
Struggling to keep his publications profitable, Jann Wenner has again drawn from his own stable of magazines in replacing Brad Weiners, the Men's Journal editor he fired last week.
Keith Kelly reports that Wenner has named Rolling Stone executive editor Jason Fine to replace Weiners at the outdoorsy-tinged mag, in a move that could Read More
Outside of a few elections here and there, the most important thing that happened to the United States of America yesterday was the release of Matt Taibbi's Griftopia, a book-length version of his iconic Goldman-Sachs-as-vampire-squid Rolling Stone extravaganza. (The secret AIG book was big, too.) Mr. Taibbi, whom The Observer interviewed for a Read More
At the climax of this summer's silly Wall Street sequel, Oliver Stone's camera lingers on our young hero's bombshell banking exposé. "The first thing you need to know," it says, "is that it's everywhere." As if it weren't already clear that Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone Goldman Sachs profile has been the splashiest piece of financial Read More
Nick Catucci, an articles editor for nymag.com, has been tapped by Jann Wenner as Rolling Stone's first-ever online editor-in chief. Mr. Wenner announced last August that he would be relaunching Rolling Stone's website this year, ending five years of Real Player–owner RealNetworks running the site on his behalf. Maybe Mr. Wenner cares a little Read More
Rolling Stone owned the media world for one week in June, when the magazine published Michael Hastings' profile of General Stanley McChrystal. The piece instantly became national news when it hit the web on Tuesday, and by Wednesday General McChrystal was in President Obama's office tendering his resignation.
We've learned that Mr. Hastings originally shopped the Read More
One week of hindsight brings a few new angles on Rolling Stone's virtual ouster of General Stanley McChrystal.
The story was a huge success, a comeback of sorts, for Rolling Stone, bringing extraordinary traffic to the magazine's website — 2.2 unique visitors in two days last week, compared to the site's monthly average Read More
General Stanley McChrystal either submitted or offered his resignation, after a day of reporting and shock around his profile in Rolling Stone, "The Runaway General." Who knows! And maybe, while we're at it, Joe Klein can tell us the difference between those two things.
In any event: How did we get here? Or, rather, how did Michael Hastings Read More
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's shit-talking in Rolling Stone has caused a massive flap in Washington, and while his insubordination is obviously the larger story, the article details a number of the general's other idiosyncrasies. For example: while at West Point, McChrystal was the managing editor of the school's literary magazine, The Pointer and wrote Read More
Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates spoke on MSNBC's Morning Joe today about the editorial process behind the magazine's explosive profile of General Stanley McChrystal. Mr. Bates emphasized that the general and his aides knew they were on the record for all of their candid remarks — including a now viral one where Read More
According to an excitedly penned page in the Spiegel & Grau publishing catalog, Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone writer known for his sharp eye and Homeric taste in similes, has a 288-page book coming out on Sept. 21. The new work from Mr. Taibbi, whom his publishers refer to as "Hunter S. Thompson meets Michael Read More
