"On the cover of the..."

Journalism "No matter how liberal the magazine has been traditionally, it's probable that the Bush administration has allowed Rolling Stone to take up a cultural position far more similar to that of its origins than it has had in decades. A few years ago, in an article for salon.com entitled 'Rolling Stone Gathers No Marx', former Rolling Stone editor David Weir bemoaned its failure to live up to its radical promise. Weir pointed out that politics began to fall by the wayside at the magazine early, as the Vietnam War came to a close. If that's the case, then the war in Iraq may well have galvanised its comeback. Rolling Stone's circulation is up to 1.5 million now; before the war, it was 250,000 less than that." -- Gaby Wood in The Observer.

I flirted with reading Rolling Stone when I commuted to Manchester last time. I remember sitting on Newton-Le-Willows' railway station one night tutting my way through an interview with Britney Spears and trying to plough through an article about the US senate. I eventually gave up because we receive the publication a few weeks late which meant that I always felt like I was time travelling. But in the end there were too many relevancy issues. Interesting as it is to expand your mind with news and comment and features about other genres of music and political environments, but too few hours in the day to keep track of your own. Choices, choices.