Rolling Stone's official response is pretty weak - I will instead link to the much stronger piece by Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Matt Taibbi explaining the cover and his reaction to it. You can read it here. Please do so. I'll wait.
(Incidentally, if you've never read Taibbi's work before, do so. And keep doing so. He's one of the best reporters out there.)
This is the strongest defense of the cover I have seen thus far. He is articulate, reasoned, and makes many great points about the investigative reporting quality regularly found in Rolling Stone, possibly the best in the country in the mass-media magazine market.
However, in his reasoning about the cover, Taibbi is one thing that he so very rarely manages to be. He is Wrong. The cover IS a big deal, because this is not the cover of any other mass media magazine. It is the Cover of the Rolling Stone.
The site rockpaper.net has an archive of all the Rolling Stone covers ever done, and from this archive list I have chosen to look at the 2000's as an example. Thirteen and a half years of covers. For individual cover photographs of people who weren't the current President of the United States or an entertainer (meaning musicians, actors, TV personalities, or Shaun White), we have the following:
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| http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS0853-550x660.jpg |
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| http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS0961-550x660.jpg |
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| http://www.catchandreleasebooks.com/shop_image/product/4aa4e5a0669dd612924042a48d538c1c.jpg |
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| http://hstbooks.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/7092281.jpg |
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| http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/18/1870/8LX8D00Z/posters/stephen-danelian-howard-dean-rolling-stone-no-941-february-2004.jpg |
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| http://cast.thirdage.com/files/originals/steve-jobs-cover.jpg |
Thirteen and a half years. SIX covers. FIVE people. Three Presidential candidates, one iconic writer intimately connected to Rolling Stone, and an Industry Legend who fundamentally shifted the way we consume media. The Jobs and Thompson covers were also in honor of their passing (one Thompson cover for his death, one for reminisces two years later).
It is true that Rolling Stone sometimes does covers for their political reporting, but there is a very noticeable difference in those covers:
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| http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/18/1870/3VX8D00Z/posters/robert-grossman-george-w-bush-rolling-stone-no-999-may-2006.jpg |
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| http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS1012-550x660.jpg |
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| http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/2010-rolling-stone-covers-20100302/rolling-stone-covers-1096-you-idiots-planets-worst-enemies-44224048 |
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| http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS1165-550x748.jpg |
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| http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Rolling-Stone-1063-JOHN-McCAIN-Jackson-Browne-Carlos-Santana-Of-Montreal-/00/s/MTYwMFgxMjAw/z/5fEAAMXQM0FRfAzh/$(KGrHqZ,!lQFEH3hWDn)BRf!zhSPFQ~~60_35.JPG |
I missed a couple for brevity. But the point is, they are not photographs. They are drawings, cartoons, and graphics.
A portrait cover on Rolling Stone is a cultural touchstone that has been with us for most of our lives. It is a symbol of an entertainment figure having "made it", and truly making a dent in popular culture. There are even songs about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ux3-a9RE1Q
(fun fact - written by Shel Silverstein)
Rolling Stone themselves are well aware of their cover's place in popular culture history, as evinced by this book available at Amazon, Rolling Stone 1,000 Covers:
http://www.amazon.com/Rolling-Stone-000-Covers-Influencial/dp/0810958651/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374336640&sr=1-3&keywords=rolling+stone+cover+to+cover
"For the past 39 years, the covers of Rolling Stone have depicted the great icons of popular culture, from John Lennon, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Madonna to Steve Martin, Uma Thurman, and Richard Nixon. Often it was an appearance on the cover that launched a performer’s legendary status in the first place."
Rolling Stone has also proffered up issues devoted entirely to their photography, the careful construction of it, and the impact on culture:
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| http://i.ebayimg.com/t/ROLLING-STONE-958-The-50-Photographs-Sep-30-2004-HM-/15/!B81lKL!!Wk~$(KGrHqQOKoYEz!t)jnMpBM4Fselmzg~~0_35.JPG |
Carefully crafted, meticulously detailed. Not found photographs.
And as for the nature of that found photograph, there is an issue of presentation. Taibbi (and others) point out the photo has been used multiple times in multiple other venues. Setting aside the argument about the Rolling Stone cover's iconic status, let's look at image presentation. Here is the image from the Taibbi article from the New York Times:
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| http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/files/2013/07/nyttsarnaev.jpg |
Note the arm position. The extension of the right arm clearly indicates this photo as a "selfie", a photo taken by himself, most likely with his phone. There are thousands of them taken by teens and twenty-somethings everywhere. It is an unremarkable photo that does not stick in the memory.
Here is the Rolling Stone crop for the cover:
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| http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/tsarnaev-rollingstone-290.jpeg |
Any remnant of the right arm remaining is removed by cropping and text. It now looks posed, professional, and striking. Which is what cropping is supposed to do. But it is no longer the same picture that Taibbi cited. It has been altered to be remembered. And in so altering, it removes the excuse of 'everyone else has used it'.
Add the image alteration to the cultural expectations of what goes into the magic of Rolling Stone cover, and it makes sense that people thought this was a professional cover shoot done by Rolling Stone.
In Rolling Stone's defense, another controversial cover has also been cited, reaching back to 1970, and the cover article of Charles Manson.
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| http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/0c9109c71ea0524d9fe840f91fabd67bb94a26a9/r=537&c=0-0-534-712/local/-/media/USATODAY/test/2013/07/17/1374076265000-XXX-manson-1970-rolling-stone-1307171152_3_4.jpg |
Setting aside trying to stake precedence on a cover that is 43 years old, the Manson cover makes sense due to the pop culture ties of the time. His "family" lived together in a commune similar to hundreds of other hippie communes of the time. He named his "family members" after Beatles songs ('Lovely Rita', 'Sexy Sadie', etc.), and believed a war called "Helter Skelter" needed to be waged. He was a musician and a songwriter, with one of his songs performed on the Guns 'n Roses 1993 album "The Spaghetti Incident" (to the shock, horror, and outrage of everyone not named W. Axl Rose.). He was the dark side of the counter-culture of the time, and the main media outlet of that culture was...Rolling Stone.
I called the cover a violation of trust, and my friend Jeff, a journalist himself, called me on that as a very bold statement. As shown by the evidence, I stand by it. Rolling Stone has spent the last 50 years defining their cover as a cultural touchstone, with a very specific set of expectations attached to it. In an age where the print magazine is running into digital issues, Rolling Stone maintains a presence, allowing for in-depth journalism of the type Taibbi mentions as dying in other outlets. It is protected by the sanctity of the cover, a cultural icon recognizable to most everyone in the Western World. To defend it as "just a magazine cover" is at best disingenuous, at worst threatens the iconic status and therefore the survival of the entity itself.
Works cited:
"Helter Skelter (Manson scenario)", Wikipedia. Web. Accessed 7-20-2013
"Look at Your Game, Girl", Wikipedia. Web. Accessed 7-20-2013
"Rolling Stone 1,000 Covers", Amazon. Web. Accessed 7-2--2013
"Rolling Stone Magazine Database", Rock Paper. Web. Accessed 7-20-2013
Dr. Hook, "Cover of the Rolling Stone". Youtube. Web. Accessed 7-20-2013
Taibbi, Matt, "Explaining the Rolling Stone cover, by a Boston native", Rolling Stone. Web. Accessed 7-20-2013
All photos cited individually. All rights reserved by the copyright holders.
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