Gauging Outcomes of the 1960s Social Equality Movements: Nearly Four Decades of Gender and Ethnicity on the Cover of the Rolling Stone Magazine

Behind the Covers of Australian Rolling Stone: Negotiating the Persona of a Female Music Magazine Editor

“…A second study of Rolling Stone covers conducted by Pompper, Lee and Lerner (2009) found the same result. They found that "males appeared three times more often than females on the Rolling Stone magazine covers, that females were nude twice as often as males, and that ethnic minorities featured … infrequently" (p. 286).…”

“…Internationally, the most famous music magazine in the west is Rolling Stone magazine and its distinctive red nameplate is still instantly recognisable. Emerging from the politically conscious underground press of the 1960s, Rolling Stone was founded by Jann Wenner and Ralph J. Gleason in 1967 in San Francisco as a counterculture newspaper aimed at young music fans (Frontani 2002;Pompper et al 2009). It quickly distinguished itself from other more radical underground press titles and became "the voice of a generation" (Frontani 2002, p. 39).…”

“…It was criticised for becoming too focused on celebrities and "light" entertainment in the 1990s and early 2000s and, as will be discussed, this is all played out in the Australian arm of the title and posed particular challenges to the Australian editors. Rolling Stone is frequently criticised for, on the one hand, its conservative music coverage that caters to the tastes of aging white baby boomers and, on the other hand, for its liberal politics, which also reflect the politics of aging white male baby boomers and, one imagines, those of founder Jann Wenner (Rosen 2006;Pompper et al 2009;Fitzgerald 2018). Supposedly a magazine about youth culture, it now has an aging readership, which, of course, makes it less attractive to the young people who are the target demographic.…”

The power of the cover: Symbolic contests around the Boston bombing suspect’s Rolling Stone cover

“…Publishers aim for consistency – churning out good covers one after the other, usually along the same themes and styles – to maintain a particular image. Finally, this consistency contributes to magazine covers functioning as cultural symbols (Cerulo, 1984; Losowsky, 2007; Pompper et al, 2009). Magazine covers are frequently discussed, reprinted, exhibited, and immortalized in displays, books, and other magazines:Sometimes, a cover image will be so iconic that it becomes separated from its context to become part of our culture’s visual memory, as with John and Yoko’s Rolling Stone cover from January 1981 and Demi Moore’s pregnant portrait from August 1991’s Vanity Fair .…”

Magazine Journalism in the Golden Age of Muckraking: Patent-Medicine Exposures Before and After the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

“…Abrahamson (2007) characterized periodicals as “singularly useful markers of the sociocultural reality” (p. 667; see also Sumner, 2010). Magazine covers, in particular, serve as cultural symbols (Cerulo, 1984; Pompper et al, 2009), and some covers become iconic representations of historical events (Bennett & Lawrence, 1995; Dahmen et al, 2018). Such images trigger emotional responses (Brantner et al, 2011; Perlmutter, 1998; Pfau et al, 2006; Zelizer, 2010) and influence attitudes and behaviors (Abraham & Appiah, 2006; Arpan et al, 2006; Coleman, 2010; Domke et al, 2002; Zillmann et al, 1999).…”