Richardcyoung.com

  • Home
  • Debbie Young
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Key West
  • Your Survival Guy
  • How We Are Different
  • Paris
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • Dick Young
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool
  • Anti-Gun Control
  • Anti-Digital Currency
  • Joel Salatin & Alfie Oakes
  • World Gold Mine Production
  • Fidelity & Wellington Since 1971
  • Hillsdale College
  • Babson College
  • Contact Us

A Bulletproof Story Goes Amok

September 20, 2023 By Debbie Young

By LadyRhino @ Shutterstock.com

Other than That, Mrs. Lincoln, How Was the Play?

Maybe no one ever read Rolling Stone magazine for truth and facts. Closer to the truth might be, who reads it at all anymore?

The old canard is that Jann Wenner, a “media visionary,” started Rolling Stone at his kitchen table in 1967. It is now valued at somewhere north of $100 million. “But it all went pear-shaped in the end.”

Under Jann Wenner’s tutorage, the first music magazine to take the form seriously, Rolling Stone blossomed from an indie magazine to a cornerstone of music journalism.

When Time correspondent David Marchese asked Wenner, 77, why there were no women or people of color among the “masters” in his latest book, The Masters, Wenner bragged that his selection of artists over the decades was “kind of intuitive” and not “deliberate” and that he didn’t find women rock artists to be “articulate enough” on an “intellectual level.”

Only White Men

David Marchese magnanimously gave Wenner another chance – to put his opinions in different words.

The scornful Wenner continued,

“It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest.”

He also didn’t believe Joni Mitchell to be as much “a philosopher of rock ‘n’ roll” as the white men Wenner had interviewed.

Creating a Firestorm

Well, guess what happened next?

Wenner’s sneering comments, “were regarded as racist and sexist,” and Jann Wenner was voted off the board (Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) he helped create.

Mortifying and Illuminating

In 2014, Rolling Stone ran a false UVA story in which Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s account of events proved to be not true. The magazine niche was a mixture of authoritative music and cultural coverage with tough investigative reporting. Wenner’s ego, according to some sources, especially in the UVA case, was too large to allow him to think he had done anything wrong.

From the WSJ’s “Notable & Quotable:” an Interview with David Marchese with Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner (The New York Times, 15 September):

From Time magazine David Marchese:

Rolling Stone had a history of producing certain kinds of stories that ended up being definitive. But there were a handful of stories that raised questions of integrity. The U.Va. campus rape story would be one of those.

Even Hunter S. Thompson—I don’t know that anyone would hold him up as a beacon of factual accuracy, regardless of the literary merit of his stories. Was there anything endemic to Rolling Stone that caused you to put the pursuit of the juicy story ahead of concerns with accuracy?

Jann Wenner: “One word answer: no.”

Marchese: ”Is it just one-offs?

Wenner:

“The University of Virginia story was not a failure of intent, or an attempt to be loose with the facts. You get beyond the factual errors that sank that story, and it was really about the issue of rape and how it affects women on campus, their lack of rights.

Other than this one key fact that the rape described actually was a fabrication of this woman, the rest of the story was bulletproof.”

The Washington Post’s Post Mortum

In 2015, a Columbia journalism school authorized by Wenner and Rolling Stone concluded that the magazine published the story despite the lack of corroboration for Jackie’s account.

Wenner apologized “wholeheartedly” for his sexist, racial remarks. Not so much about the UVA story. No one on the editorial staff ever lost his or her job over the debacle.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • A Fiscal Story
  • The Real Collusion Story
  • Michelle Goes High?
  • Why Georgia Isn’t Today’s Top News Story
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie Young
Debbie, our chief political writer of Richardcyoung.com, is also our chief domestic affairs writer, a contributing writer on Eastern Europe and Paris and Burgundy, France. She has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over five decades. Debbie lives in Key West, Florida, and Newport, Rhode Island, and travels extensively in Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga. Debbie has completed the 200-hour Krama Yoga teacher training program taught by Master Instructor Ruslan Kleytman. Debbie is a strong supporting member of the NRA.
Debbie Young
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • Prostate Screening, an Important, Imperfect Tool - May 22, 2025
  • Salvaging the Unsalvageable - May 21, 2025
  • A Calculated Decision to Keep Silent - May 20, 2025

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • How Will YOU Feel in Retirement? Let Me Explain
  • California’s Progressive Liberals Have Created a Monster
  • Can Curcumin Help in Fighting Cancer?
  • Families to Step up and Be Family Again
  • The Four Most Important Words in Investing
  • My Smith & Wesson Revolvers Home Defense Team
  • My Favorite Arrondissements in Paris
  • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • RAPPOPORT: War Applauded by “Stone Cold Utopians”
  • You Want the Limo, Not the Public Bus

Our Most Popular Posts

  • A Calculated Decision to Keep Silent
  • An American Tragedy
  • Congratulations, You Graduated into Retirement. Now What? #5
  • Retirement #4: How Do You Feel? How Will You Feel?
  • Who Knew about Biden's Health?
  • Middle East Investment Bonanza as Trump Tours Region
  • Donald Trump’s First 100 days
  • Is Trump Divorcing Bibi?
  • A Contemptable Little Twerp
  • PREPARE FOR THE WORST: Poland's Military Overhaul

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Graduation to Retirement: “I Have a Guy” #7
  • Indonesia Urged to Act Fast to Avert Domestic Gas Crisis by 2033
  • Nuclear Power Gets Green Light in Sweden Despite Political Divide
  • Behind the Code: Microsoft Hunts a Global Cyber Threat
  • Congratulations, You’re Retired: Now What? Part 6
  • U.S. Billionaires Target Congo’s Cobalt in Bid to Secure Energy Future
  • China Dominates Battery Supply Chain: From Mine to Market
  • Shale Plateau Looms as Global LNG Market Set to Double
  • Congratulations, You Graduated into Retirement. Now What? #5
  • World’s Leading EV Motor Factory to Supply Ferrari and Lamborghini

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Graduation to Retirement: “I Have a Guy” #7
  • Your Retirement Life: Top of the Rock
  • Where Do We Stand with Tariffs?
  • Congratulations, You’re Retired: Now What? Part 6
  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball
  • Is America Poised for Next Gen Nuclear Power?
  • Congratulations, You Graduated into Retirement. Now What? #5
  • Big Blue Blob Cities Drive Residents (and Money) Away
  • Don’t Forget the Laffer Curve
  • Retirement #4: How Do You Feel? How Will You Feel?

US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

My Key West Garden Office

Your Retirement Life: Traveling the Efficient Frontier

Live a Long Life

Your Survival Guy’s Mt. Rushmore of Investing Legends

“Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”

Copyright © 2025 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives