Jann Wenner Biography

Jann Wenner is the publishing tycoon best known as the guy who started Rolling Stone magazine. After growing up on the East Coast, Janner attended the University of California in Berkeley until 1966, when he dropped out and began working for San Francisco’s Ramparts magazine, a left-wing publication riding the tide of youth rebellion. With music critic Ralph J. Gleason, Wenner founded Rolling Stone in 1967, funded in part by a loan from the family of Wenn’s soon-to-be-wife, Jane Schindelheim. The magazine focused on music and politics and employed writers such as Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, as part of what was called New Journalism — speaking truth to power with profanity instead of bon mots. The magazine soon became the music magazine for what has since been called the Boomer Generation. Wenner expanded his media business in the 1970s and founded Outdoor magazine (sold in 1979), then jumped head first into the celebrity gossip business in 1985 as the owner of Us — now Us Weekly. Wenner Media started Men’s Journal in 1992 and Family Life in 1993, and sold Family Life two years later, the same year Wenner left his wife Jane for a male lover, Matthew Nye (the Wenners did not divorce for another 16 years, in 2011). Jann Wenner was also a driving force behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Hall as a non-performer.