Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Jann Wenner has fired his magazine’s publisher after a spat about where to hold an upcoming party celebrating the publication’s 1,000th issue. Publisher Steve DeLuca was understandably upset when, after securing advertising commitments based on a Rockefeller Center location, the swank affair was moved to the cachet-challenged Hammerstein Ballroom.
Upon explaining to Wenner that the venue change might cause upstanding sponsors like Clearasil, Southern Comfort and Marlboro to take their already-declining ad dollars elsewhere, DeLuca was shown the door. Associate Publisher Ray Chelstowski has stepped in to fill DeLuca’s shoes in the interim, but the twenty-year publishing veteran will presumably be permanently replaced by a nineteen-year-old contestant from Wenner’s new reality show.
The money saved on DeLuca’s salary will then be spent overpaying for exclusive stories and photos of increasingly irrelevant aging classic rock stars, buxom yet mediocre songstresses, and future Wenner flings.
