Wenner, legendary founder of the Rolling Stone magazine , has handed 23-year-old, Gus the important task of head of editorial and business operations for all Wenner Media’s websites.
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Jann Wenner legendary founder of the Rolling Stone magazine has announced the promotion of his son, Gus, to take charge of all aspects of Digital Communication for his Wenner Media print and internet publishing empire
23-year-old Gus will now proudly wear the title of Head of Digital for the online versions of the Rolling Stone, Us Weekly and Men’s Journal magazine.
Gus’s promotion comes only one year after been the responsibility for handling all digital aspects of the Rolling Stone magazine website by his father, and less than half a year after he began working in the family business.
While most industry commentators remarked at the time that the appointment was a classic case of nepotism gone wrong, since Gus has taken control of both the editorial and business operations of RollingStone.com in May 2013, the site’s traffic has climbed by 40% to reach 7.6 million unique visitors.
Gus, or Edward Augustus Wenner to give him his full title, joined Rolling Stone not so long after graduating from the exclusive Ivy League Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, where he combined the studies by playing in a country music duo alongside Scout Willis, the daughter of film stars Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.
Jann is obviously a believer in giving young talent a chance, bearing in mind that he was just 21 himself when he founded the Rolling Stone magazine in 1967. In an interview not long after Wenner had taken what looked like the ridiculous step of handing Gus the keys for the Rolling Stones website, the publisher proudly proclaimed that he had no fears that his son would not succeed as he was ‘smarter than him’.
Since joining this father Gus has made his mark throughout the business, having overseen a complete a redesign of RollingStone.com, which being programmed to live within the coming months , as well as being the early stages of planning a redesign for the Us Weekly’s website.
Gus has already confirmed that for the Men’s Journal website, he will be concentrating his efforts in improving the site’s traffic through a combination of increased and relevant content whilst revamping the site’s video production facilities for advertisers.
The younger Wenner will be indulging himself slightly with a new project that he has introduced to Rolling Stone.com, which will be a satellite website totally dedicated to covering country music, with the magazine having even opened an office in Nashville, the world center for country and Western music, to support the site, whilst convincing his father to publish a country music themed print issue of the Rolling Stone magazine to give some publicity for the launch of the website.
Jann Wenner attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he first discovered his love for music and writing. Before dropping out of Berkeley in 1966, Wenner produced the column “Something’s Happening” in the student-run newspaper, The Daily Californian, during which time he met up with Ralph J. Gleason, a jazz critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Wenner and Gleason got together to found the Rolling Stone Magazine in the white hot atmosphere of San Francisco in 1967.
In 1977, Wenner transferred the running of the Rolling Stone magazine San Francisco to New York City, and over the following three decades and more the Rolling Stone survived, despite some highs and lows, reaching its one thousandth release in May 2006, which Wenner marked with a holographic, 3-D cover based on the iconic cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album
Throughout the years Jann Wenner has made a point of involving himself in the day-to-day running of the magazine, as well as conducting and writing the magazine’s famous Rolling Stone Interviews, with his subjects including some America’s leading politicians among them Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama as well as key figures from the music and entertainment industry including Bono, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and the late John Dylan and Jerry Garcia.
