So was it a journalistic cheap shot, which ran in a pop culture rag and made a big deal over over "routine kvetching?" Or was it an important article for a "sophisticated audience" by a "serious-minded agenda-setter?"
However you spell it, the Rolling Stone article about General McChrystal was a big PR coup for the magazine. There's been a ton of buzz in its aftermath, and a range of views expressed by commentators and the print media.
In his excellent NY Times op ed, David Brooks says that McChrystal and company's tirade was just an example of the usual belly aching that has been going on forever when important people and big egos are involved. The difference now is that we are in a culture of exposure that thrives on this inside baseball scuttlebutt.
He writes about how a culture of reticence morphed into a culture of exposure over the past 50 years:
...after Vietnam, an ethos of exposure swept the culture... It became the task of journalism to expose the underbelly of public life... Then came cable, the Internet, and the profusion of media sources. Now you have outlets, shows and Web sites whose only real interest is the kvetching and inside baseball.
... General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House... But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.
By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.
The WSJ reported yesterday about the Rolling Stone's record of breaking big stories, and the potential of the McChrystal story to give it an image lift:
Rolling Stone continues to battle perceptions that it is merely a biweekly window into popular culture, not also a serious-minded agenda-setter for a sophisticated audience... Rolling Stone has a long history of covering politics and wars dates back to its launch in 1967.
The enduring value of the McChrystal article rests in its potential to burnish the magazine's reputation as a serious journalistic enterprise. Four of Rolling Stone's seven National Magazine Awards in the past decade have been for political stories
The article also details the publication's efforts to promote the story:
The publisher gave an advanced copy of the article to the Associated Press last Monday in a commonly used tactic to generate prepublication excitement. By Monday night, the commander's comments were rumbling across the blogosphere. On Tuesday morning the article briefly appeared in full on two other sites. With the story taking off, Rolling Stone was compelled to break from its standard practice to rush the story online.
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