Jann S. Wenner

Jann Simon Wenner ( ; born January 7, 1946) is an American magazine magnate who is a co-founder of the popular culture magazine ''Rolling Stone'', and former owner of '' Men's Journal'' magazine. He participated in the Free Speech Movement while attending the University of California, Berkeley. Wenner, with his mentor Ralph J. Gleason, co-founded ''Rolling Stone'' in 1967.

Later in his career, Wenner co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and founded other publications. As a publisher and media figure, he has faced controversy regarding Hall of Fame eligibility favoritism, the breakdown of his relationship with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and criticism that his magazine's reviews were biased.

Early life and career

Wenner was born in New York City, the son of Sim and Edward Wenner. He grew up in a secular Jewish family.

His parents divorced in 1958, and he and his sisters, Kate and Merlyn, were sent to boarding schools. He completed his secondary education at the Chadwick School in 1963 and went on to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Before dropping out of Berkeley in 1966, Wenner was active in the Free Speech Movement and produced the column "Something's Happening" in the student-run newspaper, ''The Daily Californian''.

With the help of his mentor, ''San Francisco Chronicle'' jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, Wenner landed a job at '' Ramparts'', a high-circulation muckraker, where Gleason was a contributing editor and Wenner worked on the magazine's spinoff newspaper.

Media industry

In 1967, Wenner and Gleason founded ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in San Francisco. To get the magazine started, Wenner borrowed $7,500 from family members and from the family of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Wenner played an integral role in popularizing writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Ben Fong-Torres, Paul Nelson, Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh, Grover Lewis, Timothy Crouse, Timothy Ferris, Joe Klein, Cameron Crowe, Joe Eszterhas and P.J. O'Rourke. He also discovered photographer Annie Leibovitz when she was a 21-year-old San Francisco Art Institute student. Many of Wenner's proteges, such as Crowe, credit him with giving them their biggest breaks. Tom Wolfe recognized Wenner's influence in ensuring that his first novel, ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', was completed, stating "I was absolutely frozen with fright about getting it done and I decided to serialize it and the only editor crazy enough to do that was Jann."

In 1977, ''Rolling Stone'' shifted its base of operations from San Francisco to New York City.
The magazine's circulation dipped briefly in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Rolling Stone responded slowly in covering the emergence of punk rock and again in the 1990s, when it lost ground to '' Spin'' and ''Blender'' in coverage of hip hop. Wenner hired former ''FHM'' editor Ed Needham, who was then replaced by Will Dana, to turn his flagship magazine around, and by 2006, ''Rolling Stone''s circulation was at an all-time high of 1.5 million copies sold every fortnight. In May 2006, ''Rolling Stone'' published its 1000th edition with a holographic, 3-D cover modeled on The Beatles' '' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' album cover.

Wenner has been involved in the conducting and writing of many of the magazine's ''Rolling Stone'' Interviews. His interview subjects have included: Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama for the magazine during their election campaigns and in November 2005 had an interview with U2 rockstar Bono, which focused on music and politics. Wenner's interview with Bono received a National Magazine Award nomination.

''Rolling Stone'' and Wenner are chronicled in three books, ''Gone Crazy and Back Again'' by Robert Sam Anson, ''Rolling Stone: The Uncensored History,'' and ''Sticky Fingers:The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine'' by Joe Hagan. Former ''Rolling Stone'' journalist David Weir is working on a biography, as is poet and Beat historian Lewis MacAdams

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