After a reign of half a century, which propelled him into the realm of the rock stars and celebrities who graced the covers of his iconic pop culture magazine, Jann S Wenner is putting his company's controlling stake in Rolling Stone up for sale, relinquishing his hold on a publication he has led since its founding, according to a report in The Independent.
The majority shareholder of Rolling Stone magazine confirmed that he is exploring sale of stake in Rolling Stone magazine "to best position the brand for future growth".
The UK newspaper quoted 71-year-old Jann Wenner as saying, "I love my job, I enjoy it, I've enjoyed it for a long time." But letting go, he said, was "just the smart thing to do."
The sale plans were devised by Gus Wenner, who has aggressively pared down the assets of Rolling Stone's parent company, Wenner Media, in response to financial pressures, The Independent said.
Rolling Stone suffered a devastating blow to its reputation when it retracted a debunked 2014 article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia. A damning report on the story by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism cited fundamental journalistic failures.
A statement released on Sunday from Wenner Media president Gus Wenner, the 27-year-old son of the magazine's founder Jann Wenner, confirmed a report by The New York Times that the company was putting the prestigious publication up for sale after 50 years, the Financial Times said in a report on Monday.
"We have made great strides in transforming Rolling Stone into a multi-platform company, and we are thrilled to find the right home to build on our strong foundation and grow the business exponentially," Gus Wenner said in the statement. Wenner Media said Methuselah Advisors had been retained as financial adviser.
"There's a level of ambition that we can't achieve alone," the younger Wenner had said last week in an interview to The Independent at the magazine's headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. "So we are being proactive and want to get ahead of the curve."
His father and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner had long tried to remain an independent publisher in a business favouring size and breadth. But he acknowledged in an interview to The Independent last week that the magazine he had nurtured would face a difficult, uncertain future on its own.
Jann Wenner said he hoped to find a buyer that understood Rolling Stone's mission and that had "lots of money." "Rolling Stone has played such a role in the history of our times, socially and politically and culturally," he said. "We want to retain that position."
Jann Wenner started publication of Rolling Stone as a 21-year-old from a loft in San Francisco in 1967. The magazine would examine the upheavals of a generation tired of the terrors of war and nuclear proliferation, conservative social mores, controlling government policies and the yearning for a world founded on multi-cultural integration, a holistic spirit and creative synthesis of ideas and reworking of themes across arts and performance genres.
The Independent noted that Rolling Stone magazine became the counterculture bible for the baby boomers. "Rolling Stone defined cool, cultivated literary icons and produced star-making covers that were such coveted real estate they inspired a song," The Independent said on Monday.
Jann Wenner tried his hand at other magazines over the decades, including the outdoor lifestyle magazine Outside and Family Life. But it was Rolling Stone that helped guide, and define, a generation, the Independent noted.
It said the Wenners recently sold the company's other two magazines, Us Weekly and Men's Journal. Last year, they sold a 49 per cent stake in Rolling Stone to BandLab Technologies, a music technology company based in Singapore.
