Jul 10, 2017 · 46m · how-i-built-this
Rolling Stone: Jann Wenner
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of NPR's How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner about the magazine's origins in 1960s counterculture, its rise into an iconic journalistic and political force, and the enduring realities of independent media ownership.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 34.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.9 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 2.6 Guy pushing back 3.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 30:15 Wenner shuts down criticism about missing punk and disco
Wenner emphatically refutes Raz's assertion that Rolling Stone missed major cultural waves, arguing decisively that the magazine covered them ahead of the curve despite fierce reader backlash.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 33:22 Raz presses Wenner on the lack of women writersRaz reads a long list of famous male contributors and holds Wenner accountable for whether he failed to actively recruit female journalists during the magazine's golden era.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 2:58 Wenner corrects Raz on student activism chronologyWenner corrects Raz's framing of 1960s student protests by pointing out that the Columbia protests did not take place until 1968, well after Berkeley led the counterculture movement.
Guy holds their own ▶ 32:07 Raz lists the legendary Rolling Stone writing rosterRaz recites an encyclopedic list of prominent Rolling Stone contributors across several decades to frame his question about Wenner's editorial curation.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco's Countercultural Tapestry | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Guy Raz demonstrates strong historical knowledge regarding 1960s student movements, comparing Berkeley to Columbia and Boston. Wenner gently corrects him chronologically, noting that Columbia's activism arrived in 1968 after the Bay Area had already initiated the movement. | |
| Mentorship with Ralph Gleason | 6 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Raz probes Wenner on the plausibility of a respected 40-year-old critic partnering with a 21-year-old with no track record. Wenner provides color on his relationship with Ralph Gleason and their shared aesthetic philosophy. | |
| Initial Capital and Volunteer Crew | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz inquires into the editorial ambition and operational logistics of launching a print publication in 1967. Wenner details cobbling together $7,500 from relatives and relying on volunteer labor. | |
| Naming and Launching on Newsprint | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz walks Wenner through the business fundamentals and the origins of the first issue. Wenner describes selecting John Lennon for the cover and pursuing hard-nosed investigative reporting on the Monterey Pop Festival. | |
| Early Business Realities and Growth | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz asks how Wenner balanced running a startup magazine against the temptations of the counterculture scene. Wenner outlines the publication's breakthrough moments, including controversial covers featuring nude photos and groupies. | |
| Enlisting Hunter S. Thompson | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Raz questions whether assigning an erratic, drug-using writer like Hunter S. Thompson to cover a serious presidential campaign was overly risky. Wenner rejects the hesitation, arguing that Thompson was uniquely suited to cover the chaotic political landscape. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Raz notes that Thompson's gonzo reporting was non-traditional, prompting Wenner to explain how gonzo journalism energized young readers alienated by conventional press coverage. | |
| Financial Growing Pains and Moving to New York | 5 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Raz pushes Wenner on his historical quote disparaging San Francisco as a 'cultural backwater.' Wenner contextualizes the quote, explaining that New York had reclaimed cultural leadership by the late 1970s. | |
| Hippie Capitalism and Business Management | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Raz asks Wenner how he reconciled countercultural ideals with the demands of being a ruthless corporate boss. Wenner dismisses the contradiction, clarifying that business realities required professional discipline and profitability. | |
| Cultural Shifts and the Evolution of Publishing | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | Raz raises common criticisms that Rolling Stone missed major musical movements like punk and disco. Wenner flatly refutes the premise, arguing they were on the leading edge of both despite reader backlash. | |
| Cultivating Talent and Newsroom Diversity | 7 | 3 | 4 | 6 | Raz reads an extensive roster of legendary male writers and explicitly challenges Wenner on the stark lack of women journalists on staff. Wenner defends the magazine by citing female editors and specific contributors, while arguing the broader era produced fewer prominent women reporters. | |
| Dynamic with Hunter Thompson and Management Style | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | Raz asks about rumors of a major falling out with Thompson and Wenner's reputation for having many detractors. Wenner denies any falling out and rejects the assertion that he was widely disliked, insisting he was a fair and loyal boss. | |
| The University of Virginia Retraction Crisis | 6 | 3 | 3 | 5 | Raz drills into the catastrophic University of Virginia campus rape article retraction. Wenner concedes it was a devastating editorial failure while pointing out that the broader investigation into campus sexual assault was accurate. | |
| How You Built That: Micro Fantasy App | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | In the 'How You Built That' segment, guest Joel Kreitz discusses his sports prediction app Micro Fantasy. Raz pushes back with a purist critique, suggesting smartphone apps ruin the screen-free magic of watching live baseball. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Wenner: 1960s student political activism originated in the SF Bay Area
“So I think political activism Among students really was generated in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
Wenner: Ralph Gleason was among few early critics taking rock seriously
“Ralph Gleason was a jazz columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to covering jazz, he would write about Some rock and roll things, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, stuff like that, and he was one of the few voices around anywhere in the country, and in S…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone started with $7,500 in pooled capital
“He had some cash to put in, and I got some
2000 dollars for my mother, and for my mother-in-law to be, and some money from a college friend of mine, and also from my stepmother.
And that assembled together was 7500 dollars, and that was what we started with.”
Wenner: Rolling Stone was named after Dylan's song and Gleason's essay
“The one that kept sticking was Rolling Stone the Dylan song, Like a Rolling Stone, and it was the title of an essay that Ralph had written for a small publication called The American Scholar, in which he laid out his thinking about the meaning of rock and roll…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone launched without paying salaries or rent
“You know, it was just, we paid what we could pay for the money we had on hand, and that would be as far as we'd go, and since we weren't paying salaries, weren't paying rent, our only cost really was printing the paper, and The cost of distributions, which I w…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone's First Issue Investigated Monterey Pop Festival Finances
“The big thing was we did a investigation to what had happened to the money that had been earned at the Monterey Pop Festival. Had it been given to charity or not? So we looked into that in a long report, and kind of established right then and there that we wer…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone reached 30,000 to 40,000 copies per issue by year one
“Hired our first employee who received 25 dollars a week, and by the end of the first year, we were a viable business with three or four people being paid, getting it out regularly, selling 30 or 40,000 copies of an issue.”
Wenner: 1960s rock music was the exclusive communication medium for youth
“Music was the kind of tribal telegraph, the drums that were beating for young people around the world, where they could kind of communicate with each other and see what other people People like them around the world we're doing. And so, this is the way young p…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone gained breakout attention by publishing banned Lennon-Ono nude cover
“Well, the first time we got a lot of attention was on the first year anniversary. We printed the cover, the band Two Virgins cover of the album that John Yoko, John Lennon and Yoko Ono did together. One that shot them in backsides and then a picture of them co…”
Wenner: Hunter S. Thompson's first Rolling Stone piece covered his sheriff campaign
“And he wrote back saying, geez, he'd been really reading Rolling Stone. It was terrific and great, but he'd love to write, but he couldn't write now because he was busy involved in running for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. So, I wrote him back and said, well, wh…”
Wenner: Hunter S. Thompson's 1972 Campaign Reporting Put Rolling Stone on the Map
“It was also one of the key things that really finally put Rolling Stone on the map in a big way. You know, everybody in the press corps was reading, everyone in the campaign was reading, and people around the country were riveted by what he had to say.”
Wenner: Rolling Stone nearly went broke three years in from office overhead
“Well, after about three years, we went through a real brush with running out of money, which lasted a couple of months, because we had moved offices in San Francisco from rent-free loft in a printer's place to a big, you know, expensive new, too expansive offi…”
Wenner: San Francisco was provincial and ceased driving music culture by 1977
“And then San Francisco wasn't so much a cultural backwater. It was just provincial. You know, it was out on the coast. It was off of the mainstream. It wasn't putting out this big, unique culture thing and music anymore.”
Wenner: The true test of business acumen is managing during hard times
“When you're involved in something like, in that stage or something, that when things are growing all the time and getting better and more and more money is coming in, you don't have to be too tough to manage that. You know, you're the victim of success from ou…”
Wenner: Sold Outside magazine at break-even due to cash constraints
“At the same time, I started a new publication called Outside, and left that in San Francisco. And there came a point where it was just too much to be carrying both magazines, so I sold Outside magazines. ... I sold it for about what I put into it, but I couldn…”
Wenner: Rolling Stone covered punk and disco despite reader backlash
“No, there was no truth to that. We were right on the punk movement and right on disco, and people hated disco. They hated us for covering disco, and other people hated us for covering punk.”
Wenner: Modern magazines should be small and reader-funded, not ad-supported
“If one wanted to do a magazine day, my counsel would be just, make us a small, make it a small magazine, and make it so that it's supported by its readers, not by advertisers.”
Wenner: Early society did not produce great women journalists in rock/culture
“It didn't matter to me, but it's just that the general society just didn't produce great women journalists at that time. There are a few who wrote for the times, but not many who wrote in our area.”
Wenner: Hunter S. Thompson fabricated their feud as a literary foil
“All I can tell you is that Hunter liked to go around Talking about how awful his bosses were, how, you know, you need to always have a villain, a foil for his writing, and if nobody else was available, if Nixon was not available to somebody else, then it was m…”