Is it just by some chance of fate that I am living during a period of American culture in which things must continue to suck more the older I get?

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, who in 1967 founded the magazine that has covered music, politics and culture by recognizing that those three elements of society are often inseparable, announced last week that the editor of FHM (For Him Magazine), Ed Needham, would be taking over as managing editor for 20-year Rolling Stone veteran Robert Love.

Needham, a 37-year-old Englishman, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that he wanted to make a push to get more 15- to 29-year-olds reading Rolling Stone by “employing a little more magazine craft, making it easier to get into a story.”

What that means, of course, is more photos (of the sexy variety), shorter stories, more graphics and a drastically reduced number of, if any, investigative, political and literary pieces.

Not that we’re talking about anything new. As a Rolling Stone subscriber, I can say without a doubt that the magazine that once distinguished itself by printing literary milestones by some of the better writers of the second half of the 20th century did not just recently come to this fork in the road. They took Attention Deficit Lane over Quality Avenue many, many moons ago. Apparently, Wenner didn’t think they were traveling down that lane fast enough.

In the Times article, Needham offered himself as an example of why Rolling Stone’s readers no longer want the lengthy, literary articles that established the magazine as a legitimate forum for journalism and fiction.

“I say `I’ll get back to it,’ but I never do because there just aren’t big enough holes in my day for reading long stuff,” he said. “I don’t know what it was like in the ’50s, but clearly there weren’t so many things demanding attention from people.”

OK, asshole. First off, Rolling Stone first hit the presses in 1967, not the ’50s. If you don’t understand the cultural differences in America between the ’50s and ’60s, and why it’s silly to confuse the two, then you should take your bloody limey butt home.

Secondly, it’s not like the magazine that has a Britney Spears cover at least twice a year reads like The New Yorker. There are usually two or three pieces in each issue that one could venture to call ambitious or even long. Those articles seem to come in two varieties: extended profiles/interviews of/with an aging rock legend or dire warnings about some new drug that killed some innocent, fun-loving high-schooler from Vermont.

The national affairs section, once filled with tremendously enjoyable P.J. O’Rourke rants and Hunter Thompson dispatches, has for the past few years concentrated almost exclusively on efforts to legalize marijuana. Two thousand words of pro-pot rhetoric is just too much for your average 15- to 29-year-old to handle? What sort of audience does Wenner want? Straight-edge derelicts weaned on corporate radio rock who prefer to read two sentences at a time, twice a day?

Wenner said in USA Today that “the main thing is to tune it up and sharpen the presentation, instead of page after page of text with no pictures.” He said 20,000-word articles would fly if the writing is about something that readers “haven’t learned on the CBS Evening News or the Internet. We want a magazine that is not dull or boring.”

Am I the only male in my demographic who thinks that mags like Maxim, Stuff and FHM are the dull and boring ones? Sure, they’re great for the bathroom, for flipping through while watching TV and for other secondary, background purposes, but why is it that male interests have been boiled down through market research to sex, beer, women and gadgets?

And since when did Rolling Stone print any long pieces that were also being covered by Dan Rather?

Perhaps Wenner would just like to think he could still put out a substantial and meaningful magazine. Maybe it’s not the times that have changed, just his attitude.

Actions always speak louder than words, and Wenner’s new right-hand man doesn’t even pretend he’d like to put out the Rolling Stone of old.

“A thoughtful and contemplative magazine like Rolling Stone loses out a little bit when there’s so much media around it,” Needham said in USA Today.

Give me a break. There’s so much quantity now that quality can’t even compete? Is that the lesson learned here? Hogwash.

The lesson is that Jann Wenner has gotten old and rich. The financial reasons for this shift in editorial focus is that ad sales were only up 2 percent and newsstand sales down 10 percent, according to the USA Today article. Revenue was, oh god please, no: flat.

Meanwhile, during the first half of this year, ad revenue grew 8.8 percent at Maxim and 55 percent at Stuff, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. Poor Jann, having to watch other competing magazines make more money than his.

Poor readers, having to watch a magazine that was at least trying to give us more than this month’s installment of how to have better sex finally throw in the towel.

Dave Roepke is a senior in journalism and mass communications from Aurora. He is the opinion editor of the Daily.