The (ir)relevance of Rolling Stone

It’s a tough time for magazines, and tough times call for drastic decisions.

Issues are being sold for a couple of bucks, feature stories are as ridiculous as ever and terrorists are now being put on covers.

Rolling Stone received a backlash of enormous proportions this week. The reason?

The cover of its Aug. 1 issue depicts the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Tsarnaev, or “Jahar” as the article affectionately calls him, is shown scruffy and posed, as if he is a professional modeling for a photo-shoot. A magnificent Instagram selfie, indeed.

Many retailers such as CVS and Walgreens are boycotting the issue, refusing to sell any copies in their stores. While the retailers’ efforts are understandable, it gives Rolling Stone exactly what it wants — attention.

It was clear the cover would create some controversy. With controversy comes publicity. It might as well have had the caption read “Jahar – HE’S DA BOMB!”

A calculated risk was made with the controversial cover. The worst part is Rolling Stone’s sad attempt at relevance is working. The magazine has managed to insert itself into pop culture. News outlets all across the nation are picking up the story (of the story), discussing the merits of the decision.

It worked on me. I read the entire article online, even though I have never ventured inside the pages of Rolling Stone in my 20 years. When’s the last time you picked up a copy? 1985?

Let’s take a look at its numbers. Rolling Stone is the 53rd most circulated magazine in the United States. If you read a different top magazine every week for a year, you wouldn’t even get to it in the first year.

More people subscribe to Golf Digest than Rolling Stone. Only 400 fewer people subscribe to Golf Magazine. The sport of golf is dominating Rolling Stone. That must hurt.

In February 2013, the three-year-old Rolling Stone restaurant failed and closed in Hollywood. Shoving food at people’s faces couldn’t even get people to read the magazine.

Looking at these facts makes the real story clear to me. This cover story isn’t about Rolling Stone’s gutsiness or stupidity, but rather its demise.

Whether you believe the decision was right or wrong, it was a desperate plea for relevancy. In one way the cover is perfect — an attention-hungry terrorist on an attention-hungry magazine.

Let’s punish them both by going back to what we have done for the past 20 years – not caring a bit about Rolling Stone.

­— lewicole@indiana.edu