Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a left-of-center American monthly magazine and digital media outlet focused on music, popular culture, and politics, founded in San Francisco, California in 1967 and headquartered in New York City as of 2026. The magazine is owned by Penske Media Corporation (PMC), a Los Angeles- and New York City-based media conglomerate that also owns Variety, Billboard, and the Hollywood Reporter. Rolling Stone has been widely described as left-of-center by media watchdog organizations and commentators, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidates in every election cycle in which it has endorsed a candidate, and has a documented history of biased political coverage and major editorial controversies, most notably the full retraction of a 2014 story detailing a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia that could not be verified. 1 2 3
Contents
Background
Rolling Stone was co-founded in November 1967 by Jann Wenner and San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason with $7,500 in borrowed funds. Its first issue, dated November 9, 1967, featured John Lennon on the cover. The magazine was founded as a countercultural publication dedicated to serious coverage of rock and roll music, and it became a preeminent outlet for the style of long-form, first-person political journalism it pioneered. In 1977, Wenner moved the publication from San Francisco to New York City. 4 5 6
In 2016, Wenner sold a 49 percent minority stake in Wenner Media, Rolling Stone‘s parent company, to BandLab Technologies, a Singapore-based music technology company founded by Kuok Meng Ru, for approximately $40 million. In December 2017, Penske Media Corporation acquired a 51 percent majority stake in Wenner Media for a price that valued the company at approximately $100 million. In January 2019, PMC purchased the remaining 49 percent stake from BandLab Technologies, giving PMC full ownership of Rolling Stone. PMC is chaired and led by Jay Penske, the son of automotive and motorsports executive Roger Penske. 7 8
Content and Positions
Rolling Stone‘s political coverage is consistently left-of-center. The magazine endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. AllSides, a media bias monitoring organization, rates Rolling Stone as “left,” noting that it displays media bias in ways that align with left-wing thought and policy agendas. Media Bias/Fact Check similarly rates the outlet as “Left Biased,” citing its use of “loaded emotional wording” in political coverage and its editorial favoritism toward Democratic candidates and causes. 1 2
The magazine has published articles describing Republican Presidents in extreme terms. In 2006, it published a cover story by historian Sean Wilentz asking whether then-President George W. Bush was the “worst president in history.” It has also repeatedly targeted President Donald Trump in its political coverage. 2 9
Controversies
In November 2014, Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus,” a story by writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely alleging that a University of Virginia (UVA) student had been gang-raped by members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The story received widespread interest and prompted then-university president Teresa Sullivan to suspend all campus fraternities. After reporting by the Washington Post and other outlets raised significant credibility questions, Rolling Stone commissioned a review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which found in April 2015 that the article was “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable,” and that it failed “basic, even routine journalistic practice.” Rolling Stone fully retracted the article on April 5, 2015. Rolling Stone later reached legal settlements with UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo and the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity over damages the false story caused them. 10 11 12
In September 2021, Rolling Stone published a story claiming that gunshot-wound patients in Oklahoma were being turned away from emergency rooms due to ivermectin overdoses, citing a single physician. The story was retracted after NHS Sequoyah hospital, named in the story, stated publicly that it had not treated any ivermectin overdoses and had not turned any patients away. The episode was widely cited as an example of left-of-center media amplifying unverified stories that supported narratives hostile to right-of-center views. 13
Leadership
As of 2026, Rolling Stone was led by co-editors-in-chief Sean Woods and Shirley Halperin, who were jointly appointed to the role in August 2025. Halperin is the first woman to hold the editor-in-chief title at Rolling Stone. The appointments followed the February 2024 departure of editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, who resigned after editorial differences with Rolling Stone chief executive Gus Wenner. Julian Holguin, a former Billboard executive, held the position of chief executive officer of Rolling Stone as of 2025. Gus Wenner, the son of founder Jann Wenner, held the position of executive chairman. 14 15
Jay Penske, the chairman and chief executive officer of Penske Media Corporation, held ultimate ownership authority over Rolling Stone as of 2026. Penske Media Corporation is a privately held company. In September 2025, Penske Media Corporation became the first major U.S. news publisher to file a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that Google’s AI Overviews feature had caused the company’s affiliate revenue to fall by more than a third by diverting traffic away from Penske Media Corporation outlets, including Rolling Stone. 16