Rolling Stone closes last San Francisco office

"Rolling Stone magazine has severed its last tenuous link to San Francisco, the city where Jann Wenner co-founded the irreverent biweekly 42 years ago to cover the psychedelic rock scene and counterculture movement flourishing in the region. New York publisher Wenner Media will shutter its three-person office at 1700 Montgomery St., spokesman Mark Neschis said....

• In the early years, however, there was a symbiotic relationship between Rolling Stone and the city, said Ben Fong-Torres, who joined the magazine as an editor in 1969.

"It was one of the energy centers of the cultural, rock 'n' roll scene of the mid- to late '60s," he said. "For Rolling Stone to be in San Francisco gave it a particular strength, a singularity. Of course, we also naturally nurtured our own scene here. We gave a lot of attention to local bands."

• An early issue featured a spread of a drug bust at the Grateful Dead's studio on Ashbury Street, he said. It regularly reported on San Francisco acts such as Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin's band Big Brother and the Holding Co. and the original Charlatans."...via Poynter.org/Romenesko

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