Week 3 EOC: Rolling Stones

Rolling Stones Controversial Cover

Rolling Stones is a very well-known music and pop culture magazine. They became America’s most recent controversial topic after releasing of their August cover. With a picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also known as Jahar one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Many people stating that Rolling Stones makes this "monster" look like a celebrity. Even though the same picture was used in The New York Times and nobody said anything about that. Why would they do something so controversial?

Rolling Stone has been around since 1962 a very established music magazine. With famous covers of bands for example Jim Morrison, The Doors, The Beatles, and etc... They cover stories on this celebrities and that is what makes Rolling Stone. Which isn't really bad thing and well it isn't a great thing neither. The Rolling Stone has publish serious journalism, but people don't seem to take them seriously. Unlike the The New York Times, CNN, or any news media. 

Matt Taibbi explains it in one bulletin in his blog, which I completely agree. “Putting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone automatically glamorizes him, because the cover of Rolling Stone is all by itself a piece of cultural iconography that confers fame and status.”

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/explaining-the-rolling-stone-cover-by-a-boston-native-20130719#ixzz2aOyqZpl1 
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The article is actually about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev earlier life and what ultimately brought him to do this horrific act. I think people are too angry with the cover to buy it or even look at it. It’s a good article but it is just too long, 12 pages to be exact. The majority of people don’t want to sit there and read 12 pages. Well if anybody reads the article like I actually did there’s a quote in the first page “People in Cambridge thought of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – "Jahar" to his friends – as a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner that "made him that dude you could always just vibe with," one friend says.” (Janet Reitman, Rolling Stone) This statement doesn't really ease people’s annoyance with the cover.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/jahars-world-20130717#ixzz2aGA1noIU
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I don’t know if it was on purpose to sell or maybe to prove they can do serious journalism. I think Rolling Stone should revised their plan to promote journalism in either a different way or just stick to music and pop culture and find new ways to advertise themselves.