Should we gather moss

Newsplaining Column: A rolling stone gathers no moss.
It’s an adage and expression most everyone knows and understands.
It’s a Muddy Waters song. It’s the name of an international, super-group, iconic-influential rock band.
It’s a hit single by one Bob Dylan.
And because of all this, it’s the name of a magazine that’s garnered at least as much attention, if not more, than its influences.
But like its influences and references, the iconic, influential and controversial magazine has too, grown moss.
After selling off sister publications Us Weekly and Men’s Health earlier this year, and selling 49 percent of the ownership in the publication to music company BandLab, Rolling Stone Magazine is intending to sell the remainder of the ownership of the publication.
Of Greek and Latin origin, with appearances in Erasmus’ third volume of his collection of Latin proverbs, Adagia —dawn of the 16th century — the adage “a rolling stone gathers no moss” was to mean that someone who does not settle in one place fails to prosper. Scientifically speaking, this is due to the fact that mosses and lichens take a good deal of time to grow on surfaces, such as a rock. If the rock keeps moving and rolling, there’s never enough time for anything to grow on it.
The magazine was started in San Francisco in 1967, by Jann Wenner and then-music critic Ralph Gleason, as a rival underground “Zine” to the Berkeley Barb, depicting not only the counterculture music style of the late 60s, by the trends, movements and ideologies of what that music brought with it.
The operation wasn’t bound; it was a paper tabloid, folded without staples, on newsprint and sold for 25 cents a copy. Wenner, a Berkely dropout, borrowed $7,500 from his family and would-be wife to start the publication. Its mission was to be more conservative, following journalistic principles and practices, rather than serve as a mouthpiece to the counter culture movement.
What ensued was almost 50 years of gallivanting with rock n’ roll’s biggest names, and serving as the unofficial bible of the counter culture movement of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Rolling Stone propelled the careers of writers and photographers, putting the late Hunter S. Thompson on the map, publishing his iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in two parts in the magazine, and giving voice to what would become gonzo journalism, the art of putting yourself in the story to obtain first hand results. There’s also the career of Annie Leibovitz, who took the 1981 photograph of John Lennon curled, naked, around Yoko Ono.
In 2009, writer Michael Taibbi wrote a scathing report about Goldman Sachs after the 2008 financial crisis, and in 2006, called George W. Bush the worst president in U.S. history. In 2010, writer Michale Hastings published a piece called The Runaway General, about then-general Stanley McChrystal’s criticism of then Vice President Joe Biden, which ultimately led to McChrystal’s formal resignation.
The magazine has had its beef with bands and other critics, about the overrated, underrated power of influential artists, as well as more popular battles as to its sexism in band and artist rankings. Unfortunately, Rolling Stone is most often remembered by the botched story about a gang rape incident at the University of Virginia, in which it lost a $3 million lawsuit about the lack of journalistic integrity taken with the story. It’s also un-fondly remembered for putting the picture of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the front cover, which had long been reserved for iconic rock stars, singers, guitarists and presidential candidates.
Now, around its 50th birthday, a magazine with a legacy of chronicling the counter culture and profiling rock stars considered unreachable, will leave the hands of the publisher who has nurtured it to stardom, and also been the culprit of its demise. Many argue that the reason the magazine has failed to be relevant in the 21 century is because it harkens back to the good ol’ days, still putting old rockers on the covers, and getting mainstream with is interview topics. Others view the magazine as an empty protest collection with no real motive or agenda, while others call it a “sell-out” capitulating to establishment media strategies and politicians that generation Y and Z hold no love for.
But Rolling Stone isn’t alone in declining profits and advertising revenue, all magazines are losing money from both, and newspapers aren’t fairing much better. With the internet, the barriers to getting the word out and finding the interesting stories are down. Some will say it’s a millennial thing and that they don’t buy magazines like older generations. And they’re probably right, but not for the reasons they think.
At some point, all of our heroes and icons mellow with age, following rules that they once disobeyed. The fact of the matter is that stones do stop rolling. We, as people, stop moving. We stop changing. We stop listening. In this day and age, if we don’t like what we’re seeing or listening to, we change the channel. Rock n’ roll stars become parents. The authority these rockers once spent their life bucking is the authority they’ve become. The same goes for the teenager in all of our hearts. At some point, we grow up.
We all gather moss.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a bad thing. But the fact remains that there’s a garden somewhere, full of statues coated in moss and lichens, reflecting the people we once were.