The problems facing Rolling Stone's online presence is that, well, they haven't had one. Since the late 90s, they've spread coverage of celebrities, politics, and music too thin. A destination full of Matt Taibbis, David Frickes, or celebrity gossips is one thing. Trying to do them all in the same publication is another, and it resulted in the literal and figurative sizing down of the publication.

Wenner needed to do something, so he fired an editor and brought in Steve Schwartz from Reader's Digest—yes, that Reader's Digest—as his, uh, let's see here...Chief Digital Officer. Great, well then. When Schwartz isn't commandeering the bridge of the Enterprise, he's gonna be piloting a different kind of ship. The kind that sinks before it can even set sail. Ahoy!

"I think there was the concept of, let's partner with a company that had experience in this space early on," said Schwartz, who plans to relaunch the site in January with new community and customization features. "A lot of companies spent a lot of money in trial and error mode." That said, he conceded, "It hasn't evolved nearly as much as we'd like it to."

Since Schwartz's hiring and their Unemployment for Christmas layoffs, they've made great strides, kinda capitalizing on Matt Taibbi's audience, and...that's it.

Eight months later, their Twitter's mostly an RSS feed of articles, interspersed with the occasional pieces of news. Even JetBlue's got a better Twitter. They don't have a Tumblr, their Facebook presence is mediocre, and their big high tech strategy involves one of the most reviled dinosaurs of the internet. What rhymes with BUFFERING?

Rollingstone.com will have a chance to update its music-listening technology; Wenner is determining if it will continue its partnership with Web music player Rhapsody, a joint venture with RealNetworks, after its relationship with RealNetworks ends.

Hm. Considering I can listen to whatever I want on Spotify or Pandora, amongst others, I would say that giving users the chance to interact with a widely available music player they hate isn't the most salient strategy. But this is what Wenner's spending his time "determining."

Forget the fact that Rolling Stone's losing breaking news traffic now (thanks, Brooklyn Vegan). Or that their Five Stars mean nothing anymore (thanks, Pitchfork). Or that their music analysis is being overrun (MBV), their political rockstar's still blogging for a political site that has their own writers working their own ad sales, and their movie critic is still Peter "Quotemaster" Travers.

Remember: Wenner has sites with pretty solid traffic(US Weekly), and as Maura Johnston noted, it still one of the biggest music destinations out there on brand recognition alone. But nobody cares about music enough to generate the kind of traffic the best music sites out there need to be competitive. That's not to say they couldn't become competitive, but it'd require the kind of intense online and editorial shakeup of direction and purpose they've never been able to make. And then flash back to Schwartz, who clearly doesn't understand Wenner's reluctance:

Schwartz admitted that Rollingstone.com is light on user engagement, which will be a big priority of the site relaunch. "The site that's out there right now-that whole notion of getting our audience involved in a dialogue is lost," he said.

It's pretty evident: Wenner's golden goose of ideals and ideology and influence on pop culture has to dignify—and even worse, compete with—the kinds of ragtag operations Rolling Stone once was back when Wenner first started it. Wenner's main man Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Looks like Rolling Stone was too mainstream and stodgy to get going, and for the most part, still are. As Huey Lewis once sang: it's hip to be square.

P6 says that Min is "sick of the weekly grind," or possibly just figures that she can't possibly get another contract as big as her current $2 mil per year one, so she's leaving.

[A Wenner Media insider we talked to wouldn't comment on Min's future per se, but said that Us Weekly itself is doing fine, with annual revenue "estimated to be well over $300 million." They also disputed P6's assertion that Life & Style has outsold Us. And while P6 floats the name of former Min deputy Colleen Curtis as a possible successor for Min, our source says that Curtis was fired, and would never be selected as Min's successor. Backbiting-y!]

The more interesting part is that Min is allegedly in LA meeting with TV execs to figure out her next gig. You are playing the deadliest game, Janice!

Min has been at the helm of Wenner Media's Us Weekly since 2003, when Bonnie Fuller left to run Star magazine for more than $2 million a year. Fuller now works for a Web site.

A WEB SITE. Do you want to end up like that, Janice? A hobo with a laptop, desperately spouting random words about "celebrities?" For not even a lot of money, we mean? No, you do not. Janice Min was one of the last incredibly blessed individuals fortunate enough to land a multimillion-dollar magazine editing gig. It is quite possible that neither she, nor any other celeb mag editor who lived through the best of times, will ever top that. Once upon a time, after Talk magazine folded, Tina Brown also mentioned that she had plans to go out to LA and climb into the glamorous world of TV. Well. Where is Tina Brown today?

Running a web site. Watch out, Janice. Three is a trend.

ASME can't really do much to renegade publications, as explained earlier this month in the New York Times. The disciplinary steps are:

• A warning letter.
  
• Withholding a National Magazine Award.
  
• Forbidding a title's participation in the National Magazine Awards.
  
• Suspending an editor's membership.
  
• A really nasty look.
  
• Saying "stop!" a second time.
  
• Brazen taunting.
  
• Jann Wenner critiques the state of your desk each week.
• An internship with Bonnie Fuller.

Obviously, in an advertising depression, certain publications are willing to give up hope of a National Magazine Award in exchange for some much-needed cash. Especially if they never had much hope of getting such an award in the first place.

Us Weekly had every reason to know it was over the line. The celebrity magazine ran a mock cover pimping HBO's Grey Gardens, albeit with a different title font and the word "advertising" across the top. ASME told MediaWeek "advertising cannot obscure the cover in any manner whatsoever," which seems pretty clear.

Entertainment Weekly, part of the esteemed, ethically-concerned Time Inc. empire, got a spanking for turning its cover into "a pocket that contained a pull-out ad for the ABC show The Unusuals," in the words of the Times.

ESPN had a fold-out cover flap touting a pitch on the other side for Powerade.

All three got an ASME reprimand, which is just a warning.

The question now is how long it takes before highbrow titles follow in the footsteps of the celebrity titles. They tend to look to the National Magazine Awards to burnish their upscale positioning. And will ASME will hold to its standards when they do, or just capitulate in the name "economic reality?"

[MediaWeek]

(Pic via MediaWeek)

An indeterminate number of people were let go in "big layoffs" in production, sales and marketing, a tipster tells us. Most of the recent cuts are said to be recent hires, at the Us Weekly and Rolling Stone publisher for less than a year. (More info? Shoot us an email.)

Let's review the history:

• "Big layoffs" across titles (sounds like) on Jan. 8.
• At least three editorial staff let go from Rolling Stone Dec. 19, just before head honcho Jann Wenner heads off for his annual long winter break.
• Four or more Rolling Stone staff, including the online editor, let go in early December.
• "Several online people, several marketing people, an assistant, a sales rep and three unnamed people from Men's Journal" in early November.

Ken Wells, senior editor
Jeff Garigliano, senior editor
Jeff Van Dam, associate editor
Mary Bridges, reporter
Paul Smalera, staff writer

More cuts are coming at Portfolio, particularly on the web side. [All Things D]

To many industry watchers, US Weekly remains an intriguing prospect for a sale. Mr. Wenner is perceived to be less emotionally attached to it than to Rolling Stone, which he founded 41 years ago as an outlet for his interest in music, and with which he is as personally and professionally involved as ever.

...And while he periodically floats the idea of selling his magazines, friends and former colleagues say, Mr. Wenner himself says he would like to hand over the business to his sons.

Still, he won't exclude the possibility of a sale. "You always think about it," he said.

And you always think about in such visible places!

[WSJ]

• Don't even try to start a magazine today; Wenner says it's impossible. Besides financing and publishing support, "you need, at the center of it, some extraordinarily talented, prescient individual. Such as I was." Oh!
• Wenner regrets selling Outside magazine. He does not give a shit about the Internets.
• On US Weekly: "As trivial you may think the subject matter is, it is a really well-executed product, with high standards of writing and wit and photography and design."
• Awkward moment: Fine: "I want to pull back for a minute, and go back to the view from 30,000 feet—" to which Wenner replies: "I like it when I'm seeing you 30,000 feet." Fine: "Ha."
• If he could go back 20 years and see himself now ? "I'd think, Wow. I'd think, how incredible. What a lucky guy. What great writing. He's covering all that music I like. He's friends with all those people. He gets to go to all the great concerts. God. What a fantastic job. Which is exactly what 21-year-olds think of me right now...Honestly, [the 21-year-olds] want to be me. I mean, really." Oh Jann, only the insecure and overcompensating ones!
• Jann does not miss Kent Brownridge, his number 2. "No, not at all." Nor does he miss former Men's Journal editor and former Rolling Stoner Jim Kaminsky, who joined Brownridge at Maxim. "Honestly, god bless him, I'm glad he left. He was taking it in a direction I didn't like. Kind of an airline magazine."
• The irrelevance of Time magazine, which he does not read: "What does Time magazine stand for on the Internet? About the same thing it stands for as magazine. Well, who wants it? You've got CNN online. You got New York Times online. Got the Washington Post online. You've got so many other journalistic news organizations online, why would you turn to Time?"
• What Jann does read: Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Times, the Washington Post and the Journal. "I might stop reading the Journal," he tells Fine. "Well, we'll see what happens, and how damaging [Rupert Murdoch] is to it...I've got so much [expletive] going on."
• 
  So do we, Jann! Like, we have to get back to wishing desperately we could be you! Well, minus the nearly-jobless married guy wandering around New York claiming he made out with you. Him, you can keep. We're just interested in the terrified minions and the total disconnect with reality.

• Don Imus' contract with CBS said: "Services to be rendered are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial, and personal character." Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks that makes Imus's $40 million lawsuit against CBS a bit more plausible. [CNN]
  
• Grocery store magnate/alleged Radar investor Ron Burkle in talks to merge with American Media Inc. (Star, National Enquirer, etc.). [NYP]
  
• Former Maxim EIC Keith Blanchard has left Wenner Media, where he's been since October. [WWD]
  
• Time Warner's cable business is carrying the can for its sorry publishing component. [NYP]
  
• Details douchebag Dan Peres rises a bit in our estimation. His take on Mark Whitaker's branding Adam Moss "the new David Remnick": "Remnick is beloved, as you know. It would have been much funnier if it had been about someone we all can't stand." [WWD]

As much as we'd like to feign interest in who won this exercise in faux-journalistic stupidity, a mole tells us that the real buzz around Wenner is whether or not the show will air:

Then again, most of us could really give a rat's ass about the outcome of this contest. The general consensus seems to be that the contestants were a bunch of idiots who didn't know what to do when the cameras weren't rolling, and the MTV producers were intolerable pricks. Many of us don't think that the show will actually ever be aired, as we can't imagine how the footage could ever be edited down to the point of being even vaguely interesting. The rest of us are terrified that it'll take off & be successful, and the next logical step will be a contest for a group of idiots who want to be interns for US Weekly.

God forbid — unless it were hosted by Xzibit. Jann's been dying to get something pimped.

Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of the Rolling Stone Reality Show

Theo Wenner [SelfPortrait, top listing]
Earlier: Children of the Ruling Class: Theo Wenner Assumes the Position

As we were saying, the Bard sophomore has been bouncing about the RS offices, cropping pictures of Chingy. The next issue of the mag features two of Theo's photos for short articles about Cassie and Ben Kweller; wonder if he's pissed that his big break was in such a lame magazine. Maybe Blender will take you next year, big guy.

Moving forward: let's see the MySpace and Facebook pictures. We trust you all to realize our dream.

An Intern With a Shot at the Top [Lowdown (2nd item)]

jessica was in a show called dark angel. she was featured on entertainment weekly, and that series was also on that cover. on the cover, dark angel appears as:

dark
angel

this forms the message gkel, and that was the name one of my professors at umass. i thought i did poorly on the first test, and wanted to quit. but i couldn't because it would have affected my financial aid. so i fought, and got an "A," one the very few students who did.

it was a great lesson, and the message is to not to quit, and to fight to make getting into US and marrying jessica a reality.

[...]

in the may 29, 2006 issue of us weekly, the editor tells readers that the date may 7th (5/7) is significant for various reasons. E is the 5th letter of the alphabet, and G is the 7th letter of the alphabet. therefore 57 becomes EG, or GE backwards.

the chairman of us weekly is jan wenner. her initials are JW.

jack welch, whose initials are also JW, was chairman of GE, and he became chairman/CEO in 1981, the year my soulmate was born.

[...]

examine the word "eggs." e is the 5th letter of the alphabet, and g is the 7th letter of the alphabet. and therefore, the word "eggs" becomes 57gs.

as mentioned in sign #47, 57 is significant to us weekly, and GS is pronounced "jes."

so the message is, is that us weekly (57) is going to put me in touch with jes.

[...]

57 is code for US weekly (because in the may 29, 2006 issue, the editor Janice Min tells the readers that the date 5/7 is very significant to US). so this is an example of how god encodes meaning. henceforth, the number 57 is code for US.

"0" looks like a circle which is a symbol of unity or marriage

28 is jessica's birthday

and i am god's #1

so the message becomes:

US weekly (57) marries #1 and jessica (28)

[...]

i'm going to talk about god (guide to...) but before i do that, i want to open up and talk about the future.

god represents infinite life and possibility. so does hollywood, so does US magazine. i'm well aware that if a person gets exposed to all this, then loses it, it's devastating. i don't use people, then discard them when i get what i want.

my intent with you, is to see you if you are interested in all this, and then after we meet and talk, commit to you. you might be thinking "if i help you, is this forever?" and the answer is yes, because i would never expose a person to all this then take it away from them.

i am trying to get on the staff of US and create something in hollywood that has never been done before. it's a new paradigm shift. and i need a team to do that, along with editor, janice min.

if we can talk, first through email and then in person, we can both get a feel if we want to work together. and if the answer is yes, then you can be my partner in making this a reality, and once it becomes a reality, our relationship is for forever. and i can make that promise, after i get a better sense of your personality.

in the beginning this was just about being with an actress. but what i realized over time, was that hollywood has the potential to be infinite life. it's a "life MATRIX." and the center of all that life, is US magazine.

i'll tell you what i want to do, soon. but if we can talk, and get a better sense of each other's personality, we can see if we want to work together. if the answer is yes, then we can be partners in making this a reality. i won't ask anything of you, until i get a better sense of who you are. then i can say "yes. this is for forever."

i'm aware that if you invest your spirit into something, you don't ever want to lose it. and this isn't some kind of financial investment, it's an investment of the heart. i know this, and that makes me very responsible towards the people i share this with.

jessica, US magazine has the potential to be infinite life!!!

did you see the movie miracle? it was about the USA Olympic hockey team beating the Soviets against impossible odds. and kurt russell plays their coach, herb, who leads them to that amazing victory.

he gave his team a psychology test, and i loved that so much. that's me. i'll give you a "psychology test" before i make you my partner (smile). then you can give me one, too.
then if we both want to work together, i'll commit to you forever. i would certainly not take this away from you after we win the gold...US magazine, Hollywood, is LIFE!!

god is like herb, and he wants to win the gold...i'll tell you about god (guide) in the next email...

hope you open up and talk to me...

Earlier: Gawker's Unwavering Coverage of Crazy Us Weekly Guy^TM

Now go enjoy the work of these skilled, young writers:

Forget Coachella and Bonnaroo: For real festival madness, try traveling all the way to Denmark for mainland Europe's biggest rock fest, the four-day-long Roskilde — where you can swim nude, fish (and have your catch cooked by pro chefs), play basketball, guzzle Tuborg and, oh yeah, rock out to 180 or so acts from Bob Dylan to Kanye West.

What? You were expecting Lester Bangs?

Live Review: Denmark's Roskilde Festival [RS]

A few more dazzling pictures after the jump.

[via aekituesday's Flickr]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of the Rolling Stone Reality Show

Also amusing: when MTV and Rolling Stone were first developing the show, MTV's original pitch went something like this: "They'll all go out and try to land an interview with someone from the Warped Tour! And whoever gets the best interview or sleeps with the band gets their band on the cover! But then it's an ethical dilemma, because they slept with the band!" Oh, who cares about ethics? Everyone just wants to see AFI molest a pretty intern in the Vans tent.

Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of the 'Rolling Stone' Reality Show

To be slightly fair, it's always fun to read rambling editor interviews, but rather than ask that you delve into all four pages of rehashed celebrity worship analyses, we'll summarize the article's main points:

• We have no real friends, only celebrities.
• People don't truly love any magazines except for Us Weekly.
• Celebrity weeklies render birth control useless.
• Jann Wenner says Us Weekly takes its cues from the bible.
• You take whatever job you are offered, even if it's at a celebrity rag.
• Brangelina only pretend to want privacy and capture interest by continually cockteasing us.
• By exploiting their personal lives, no-talents like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey continue to exist.
• By exploiting her vagina, Kristin Cavallari existed for about "32 seconds."
• Us Weekly will slowly trick us into caring about Jennifer Lopez again.
• Nicole Kidman is too old for the cover.
• Tori Spelling, however, is not too ugly for the cover.

'Us' Editor Janice Min Dictates: In Raw Times, Jessica, Jen, Jolie [NYO]