Editing Rolling Stone (section)

===1980–1999: Change to entertainment magazine===
[[Kurt Loder]] joined ''Rolling Stone'' in May 1979 and spent nine years there, including as editor. [[Timothy White (writer)|Timothy White]] joined as a writer from ''[[Crawdaddy (magazine)|Crawdaddy]]'' and [[David Fricke]] from ''[[Musician (magazine)|Musician]]''.<ref name=writers/> Tom Wolfe wrote to Wenner to propose an idea drawn from [[Charles Dickens]] and [[William Makepeace Thackeray]]: to serialize a novel. Wenner offered Wolfe around $200,000 to serialize his work.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen | 2002 |p= 31}}</ref> The frequent deadline pressure gave Wolfe the motivation he had sought, and from July 1984 to August 1985, he published a new installment in each biweekly issue of ''Rolling Stone''. Later Wolfe was unhappy with his "very public first draft"<ref>{{Harvnb|Ragen|2002|p=32}}</ref> and thoroughly revised his work, even changing his protagonist, Sherman McCoy, and published it as ''[[The Bonfire of the Vanities]]'' in 1987.

''Rolling Stone'' was known for its musical coverage and for Thompson's political reporting and in 1985, they hired an advertising agency to refocus its image under the series "Perception/Reality" comparing Sixties symbols to those of the Eighties, which led to an increase in advertising revenue and pages.<ref>{{cite news|title=Perception/Reality|work=Rolling Stones 50 Years|pages=14–15}}</ref> It also shifted to more of an entertainment magazine in the 1980s. It still had music as the main topic but began to increase its coverage of celebrities, films, and pop culture. It also began releasing its annual "Hot Issue".<ref name="IndianUniversity">{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Sammye |last2=Prijatel |first2=Patricia |title=The Magazine from Cover to Cover: Inside a Dynamic Industry |date=1999 |publisher=Indiana University |isbn=9780658002298 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8_nyAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Rolling+Stone%22+annual+hot+issue+1980s |access-date=August 15, 2019 |archive-date=December 9, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209195414/https://books.google.com/books?id=8_nyAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Rolling+Stone%22+annual+hot+issue+1980s |url-status=live }}</ref> In the 1990s, the magazine changed its format to appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. This led to criticism that the magazine was emphasizing style over substance.<ref name="samuelfreedman.com"/><ref name="theatlantic"/>