With the help of his mentor,
San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic
Ralph J. Gleason, Wenner landed a job at
Ramparts, a high-circulation
muckraker, where Gleason was a contributing editor and Wenner worked on the magazine's spinoff newspaper.
Rolling Stone In 1967, Wenner founded
Rolling Stone magazine in
San Francisco. To get the magazine started, Wenner borrowed US$7,500 () from family members and from the family of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Wenner played an integral role in popularizing writers such as
Hunter S. Thompson,
Ben Fong-Torres,
Paul Nelson,
Greil Marcus,
Dave Marsh,
Grover Lewis,
Timothy Crouse,
Timothy Ferris,
Joe Klein,
Cameron Crowe,
Joe Eszterhas, and
P.J. O'Rourke. He also discovered photographer
Annie Leibovitz when she was a 21-year-old
San Francisco Art Institute student. Many of Wenner's proteges, such as Crowe, credit him with giving them their biggest breaks.
Tom Wolfe recognized Wenner's influence in ensuring that his first novel,
The Bonfire of the Vanities, was completed: "I was absolutely frozen with fright about getting it done and I decided to serialize it and the only editor crazy enough to do that was Jann." In 1977,
Rolling Stone shifted its base of operations from
San Francisco to
New York City. The magazine's circulation dipped briefly in the late 1970s and early 1980s as
Rolling Stone responded slowly in covering the emergence of
punk rock and again in the 1990s, when it lost ground to
Spin and
Blender in coverage of
hip hop. Wenner hired former
FHM editor Ed Needham, who was then replaced by Will Dana, to turn his flagship magazine around, and by 2006,
Rolling Stones circulation was at an all-time high of 1.5 million copies sold every two weeks. In May 2006,
Rolling Stone published its 1,000th edition with a holographic, 3-D cover modeled on
The Beatles' ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''
album cover. Wenner has been involved in the conducting and writing of many of the magazine's
Rolling Stone Interviews. His interview subjects have included
Bill Clinton,
Al Gore,
John Kerry, and
Barack Obama for the magazine during their election campaigns and in November 2005 had an interview with
U2 rock star
Bono, which focused on music and politics. Wenner's interview with Bono received a
National Magazine Award nomination.
Rolling Stone and Wenner are chronicled in three books,
Gone Crazy and Back Again by Robert Sam Anson,
Rolling Stone: The Uncensored History by Robert Draper, and
Sticky Fingers:The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan. Robin Green's memoir
The Only Girl covers the time she worked at
Rolling Stone. Wenner founded the magazine
Outside in 1977; where
William Randolph Hearst III and
Jack Ford both worked before Wenner sold it a year later. He also briefly managed the magazine
Look and, in 1993, started the magazine
Family Life. In 1985, he bought a share in
Us Weekly, followed by a joint purchase of the magazine with
The Walt Disney Company the following year. The magazine made the transition from a monthly to a weekly in 2000. In August 2006, Wenner bought out Disney's share to consolidate 100% ownership. From 2004 to 2006, Wenner contributed approximately US$63,000 () to
Democratic candidates and liberal organizations. In October 2016, Wenner started publishing
Glixel, a
video games-based website. In September 2017, Wenner Media announced that the remaining 51% of
Rolling Stone was up for sale. That share was bought by
Penske Media Corporation, who later acquired the remaining stake from BandLab. In 2022,
Little, Brown and Company published Wenner's memoir,
Like a Rolling Stone. ==Controversies==