Magazine Study: Rolling Stone

The magazine I choose to use for this reading assignment is the December, 18th, 2014 to January, 1st, 2015 edition of Rolling Stone. It is difficult to narrow down just one target demographic for this magazine. If one judges just from the front cover, it looks more like an adult men's magazine by the way it is designed. However, inside most of the articles are just on celebrities, movies and pop culture, all of which are topics that can appeal to a wide range of people. I have read Rolling Stone a couple of times when there was an interview with a celebrity that I like, but it is not something that I regularly read. Rolling Stone can be a political magazine and this specific issue of the magazine happens to have more articles about political problems as well, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, which is what they discuss in several pages. They once put the man who was behind the Boston Marathon bombing on the cover of their magazine and they received quite a lot of backlash for that.

The front cover has immediately hooked the audience if they have an interest in Seth Rogen. People who do not care for him probably would also not want to buy the magazine. As someone who is not a fan of him, I would not buy this edition of Rolling Stone. However, I may flip through it at the grocery store if I had time. There is so much controversy surrounding him and his new movie, titled The Interview, that even though I am not crazy about him, I want to know more about it. He was a good choice for a magazine cover, because many other people are probably just as curious too, as he has been a popular topic lately.

There are plenty of advertisements for alcohol, which makes it clear that this magazine is mostly targeted for adults. There is also a lot of advertising for television shows, books, music and Netflix, and that fits in with the general theme of the magazine very well.

I choose to read the article on Seth Rogen, because he seems to be the focal point of the magazine. Also because, as previously mentioned, I am curious about the huge controversy his newest movie has caused. The article is not arguing anything in particular, except perhaps what a funny, laidback guy Seth Rogen apparently is. Most of the pictures that surround the text in the article are photographs of him in action: on set of his movie or doing stand up comedy. There is a general theme in the way that those few pages are laid out. They feature the North Korean flag at the topic of the page to go with The Interview. This article did not make me want to see the movie. I am all for satirical comedy, but the idea behind this movies just seems disrespectful and like it trivializes the atrocities that the citizens of North Korea face everyday.

Overall, this is a useful magazine. It has informative music and film reviews, as well as political information. It gives celebrities very honest interviews and readers get a little peak into their lives. Rather than asking a series of questions like most traditional interviews, the interviewer writes about what the celebrity is doing in their daily life.