A Message to Rolling Stone Magazine: You Suck

Rolling Stone Magazine, for some pathetic reason or another, has been a staple of American "journalism" for quite some time. People consider Rolling Stone writers rock and roll Gods of some sort, when they're really nothing more than hacks with the writing ability of your average freshman in high school.

Sorry, but they've put me in a bad mood today.

I have subscribed to Rolling Stone for around five years now, and I've always taken their magazine with a grain of salt. I've been able to tolerate their opinion-filled articles, boring photography and biased album reviews without much of a problem, but this time they've gone too far.

If you open up the July 25 or August 8 issues of Rolling Stone and turn to the letters section, you'll notice something different. Mainly, you'll notice how they've started printing celebrity responses to negative letters. If someone calls KISS frontman Gene Simmons an "arrogant putz", as a letter writer did in the August issue, Gene Simmons will get to respond with–and this is a direct quote from the magazine–"I am a putz! You got a problem with that?"

It's bad enough that Rolling Stone kisses the ass of every celebrity they profile, but now they have to give celebrities special protection from the opinions of readers, too? The letters section is the only place where regular Joe's and Jane's can express their related opinions and frustrations. Unfortunately, reader response has now been turned into a joke in Rolling Stone.

I'm not against letting celebrities defend themselves; everyone has that right. But if celebrities want to respond to a difference of opinion, they can do it the same way all of us do: by writing a letter or e-mail that will be published in a later issue. It's the only fair way to handle things.

But celebrity protection isn't the only atrocity Rolling Stone is providing: now they're even allowing their writers to respond to letters of criticism.

In the letters section of the July 25 issue, a reader criticized reviewer Ann Powers for her praise of the band Weezer. Powers applauded Weezer's ability to release quality albums quickly, and the reader claimed the band took an hour-long album and turned it into two 30-minute albums, in order to make more money. The reader, despite his excellent point and well-written letter, is instantly reprimanded and called an unfaithful music fan by Powers.

Apparently, Rolling Stone was looking for an excuse to give themselves celebrity treatment as well. As a newspaper reporter, if I were to try and instantly respond to a reader's written criticism, my editor would laugh me right out of the building. The reason for this is obvious; it's a highly unethical thing to do. In journalism, you have to take the good comments along with the bad. You can't just instantly refute all complaints about your work, no matter how much notoriety you've gained. Doing so is the sign of a coward.

So, will this column accomplish anything? No. Will the letters section change in Rolling Stone simply because of what I've written here? Don't count on it. Will any of the writers or editors at Rolling Stone even read this column? Of course not. It's just a forum I'm using to vent my frustrations. And with Rolling Stone's new letters section, this is the only place I've got left.