About Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is an American magazine that focuses on pop culture. It was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner in San Francisco. It was first known for musical coverage and political reporting but now has many different features including news, video, music, politics, TV, movies, sports, etc.. To start off his new endeavor Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his family. When Rolling Stone first started it mainly centered on music especially appealing to the hippie counterculture but it took rise when it added political coverage to its arsenal.
Rolling Stone's Audience
When Rolling stone first took off their main focus was on music so they appealed to people who found music enjoyable and considered themselves to be music enthusiasts. Now, music is still a big part of the ambiance of Rolling Stone, which is shown through their ads containing concert tickets and their big headlines encompassing something or the other about music. However, they now appeal to wider audience which is shown through the many different features they showcase on their website.
"DONALD TRUMP VS. MADONNA: EVERYTHING WE KNOW"
This article was written by Brittany Spanos who uses a conversational tone yet formal diction to explain to her readers the feud between singer and president, Madonna and Trump. The conversational tone starts off with the title which displays a gossipy attitude through the use of "everything we know" as if she's about to "spill the tea" on two close friends. The author remains unbiased, but in my eye, there's slight favor towards Madonna. This seems likely to me because of the amount of evidence the author uses against Trump versus Madonna. Madonna's opinions on Trump are definitely voiced more in this article than Trump's against Madonna (although briefly mentioned). However, there was an article linked at the side of this one with the title "Trump on Madonna: She's Disgusting", so maybe the author felt as if Trump's opinions had been highlighted enough. Overall, the effect the author is trying to have definitely seems favored towards Madonna especially how the author uses Madonna's quotes that in suit Trump either by calling him weak or ugly. The intention of this article seems to be to prove that Madonna was the clear winner of this feud.
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"Brad Pitts' Revealing Interview: 5 Things We Learned"In this article, the author, Ryan Reed, has informal diction while having an informational tone. The tone Reed uses is conversational and sounds like he is sharing some of Pitt's unknown secrets. Reed keeps it informational, telling the readers the main parts of the interview while making it sound like gossip because of his conversational tone. The informal diction makes it seem like gossip as well; Reed sounds as if he is simply talking to a friend instead of posting on a well-known media outlet.
Unlike most interviews, this one does not include questions followed by answers, but rather, it is the highlights of the interview. These highlights include Pitt's life as an adolescent, his divorce, and interesting things that have occurred in his house. For example, he was told by a hippie that Jimi Hendrix once broke into his house to record a song. This information seems incredibly interesting to the author, Reed, otherwise he would not have chosen this circumstance in his article on his interview with Pitt. Like the article on Madonna and Trump, this article talks as if it revealing exclusive information. |
"Fans to the Front: How Internet Fandoms are Gaming the Music Industry"Unlike Brittany Spanos article on Madonna and Trump, this article is more informative and has a more formal diction. Spanos appeals to logos through presenting evidence of internet fandoms and providing facts on streaming. She explained how music streaming became a big part in 2012, which was a year after Spotify launched. She presented evidence on One Direction fans, Directioners, creating a fandom that was expressed on many social media outlets and how that drove the boyband to success. She keeps the diction strictly professional by providing an abundant amount of evidence on this topic and keeping an informational tone. Although Spanos was informational throughout her article, she did present some bias by stating that artists like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheehan have "mastered" the formula on obtaining many listeners on streaming apps like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music. This presents some bias because it is an opinion that Swift and Sheehan are masters of this musical formula. However, it is an option that I agree with because Ed Sheehan and Taylor Swift are incredibly talented and intelligent artists that I favor, but other people do not necessarily appreciate their music the same way.
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"Zooey Deschanel Reveals Prince Nixed Kardashian 'New Girl' Cameo"This article by Daniel Kreps includes a video on Deschanel's interview with Conan along with a detailed description of the situation that had occurred. Apparently, the episode of New Girl that had a rare cameo of Prince has quite an interesting story behind it. Kreps unravels the story while keeping a conversational and gossip-like tone with detailed imagery of the situation that Zooey Deschanel described. He informed his readers of the gossip that evoked from Prince's request to keep any Kardashian footage out of the episode he appeared in. This then led to the overdramatic burning of all the evidence of the Kardashians making an appearance in that episode in an on-set bonfire. This provoked curiosity in why Prince would demand that the Kardashians not appear as a guest at his staged party on the show; some believed it was because Prince once kicked Kim Kardashian off his stage because he did not like her dancing.
Kreps did an outstanding job in keeping any bias out of this article. He kept a conversational yet informative tone throughout and stuck to his appeals to logos by mainly presenting facts and not including his opinion. Of course, if this was an opinion piece that would not be a positive attribute. |
"Miley Cyrus Responds to Backlash Over Hip-Hop Remarks"This article, written by Daniel Kreps, emphasizes the misinterpretation of the media and journalists on celebrities remarks. He keeps an informative tone while explaining Cyrus' situation in where she was accused of bad-mouthing hip-hip music. She then explained herself in an Instagram post which was used as evidence in her favor. This post explained that Cyrus appreciates all types of music but she was specifically asked about hip-hop/rap, so her opinion focused on that genre, and in that genre, she stated that she does not appreciate extremely explicit songs but rather prefers more uplifting and conscious songs.
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Again, Daniel Kreps presents an unbiased article because he did not make his opinion evident in this piece, however, he seemed to slightly favor Cyrus. His favor towards Cyrus was apparent to me because he mainly included evidence that protected Cyrus against her words and provided proof that they media tends to skew the words of many celebrities and Miley Cryus fell victim to this. |
"10 New Artists You Need to Know: February 2017"
Rolling Stone is one of the many social media outlets that provides lists on what you need to know or what you need in your life and so on. These particular lists do not have one exact author but include a sort of medley of many voices so that many opinions are included rather than just one opinion of an author with a particular taste in music. In each artist they mention, there is the name of the artist followed by a picture of the artist(s). They include a descriptions of the sound that artist has and who would enjoy this music; because they generally showcase lesser-known artists they include more famous artists that have similar sounds. They include a short description on what the reader/listener should look for out along with a short background on the artist and what that particular artist says about their work. Then, they proceed to name the song they believe the readers would enjoy the most along with an imbedded music video of that song. The occasion for presenting these lists is to broaden the music preferences and knowledge of the general audience of Rolling Stone. This particular list was from the month of February of 2017 and included artists Julia Michaels, Khalid, Judah & the Lion, Code Orange, Maggie Rogers, Jahkoy, Beachheads, Ray Blk, Palberta, and Buscabulla. I am somewhat familiar with a select few of these artists and I can contest that they have a greatly diverse selection of artists that are extremely good and deserve more recognition. Which is another purpose of these lists: to include artists that deserve more recognition.
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"Lil Yachty Preps Debut Album, 'Teenage Emotions'"This article, written by Jon Blistein, is extremely informative. It is a short article that assists the young artist, Lil Yachty, in spreading news of his new album coming out May 26th, 2017. It includes a preview of his features that will be included in his new album, Teenage Emotions, gives a sneak peek of the list of songs that will be included on the album. This article coincides perfectly with another article "Lil Yachty Plots Summer Tour, Channels the Eighties in 'Bring it Back'" Lil Yachty Plots Summer Tour, Channels the Eighties in 'Bring it Back'" by Elias Leight. Which also informs its audience, Lil Yachty fans, of his summer 2017 tour and provides the dates and venues for his 27 performances of his tour where he wraps up his tour in his hometown, Atlanta. Leight describes Yachty's new song, Bring it Back, as an 80's pop mode song with "crisp instrumentation and mathematically precise arrangements" which is high praise for the hip-hop/rap Atlanta trap artist. He also includes the music video of Lil Yachty's new song and describes it later in the article saying that it was set in a high school prom where he seems to be the life of the party. Both articles have the same audience, which is Lil Yachty fans, and they serve the purpose of informing those fans of updates on his music, tour, and upcoming events. They both have an informative and descriptive tone on his music, but Leight seemed to like Lil Yachty more because his description of Yachty sounded like a well-thought compliment.
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Brittany SpanosThe articles by Brittany Spanos that were analyzed shows that she has a variety of writing styles and she can change up her style to fit the topic. She can switch between gossip & facts and informative & conversational tones. It is evident that Spanos value diversifying her writing to many types of audiences. Her types of pieces do not have specific audiences because they change by article, and she writes on many diverse topics. However, her pics are similar in that they both have the same purpose of informing the reader on the topic while letting her audience know her opinion.
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Daniel Kreps
Daniel Kreps values unbiased articles which is evident because he does not clearly express his opinion in the articles that he writes. Therefore, he writes articles mainly to inform his audience, which would be people seeking unbiased information on current social events, which seems to be his subject. He uses an informative tone in his articles that focus mainly on appeals to logos because he presents many facts rather than opinions.
Rolling Stone's twitter is taken care of well in the sense that each tweet has a picture to go along with it and a link to the article that it mentions. Also, they post regularly, reaching about 3-5 posts per hour. A limitation that seems apparent in their twitter is that the word count seems to be compiled entirely of a basic headline which may not draw the audience in that well. However, the more interesting topics might get clicked on by someone strolling through twitter.