2023 Chris Boskin Dean’s Speaker Series in Business and Journalism featuring Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone Magazine founder, co-editor, and publisher.

Wenner will be on stage with journalist, historian, and music critic, Greil Marcus, talking about Jann’s portrait of not just one man’s life, but the life of an entire generation. Jann’s recent memoir “Like a Rolling Stone“, is his story about the founding of a publication and the music, politics, and lifestyle of an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond.

Besides founding and editing Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner also published Outside, US Weekly, Family Life, and Men’s Journal. He also co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Following the discussion, there will be an opportunity for audience Q&A led by Dean Geeta Anand. Books will be available for sale at the event.

About Jann Wenner
Jann S. Wenner was born in New York City and raised in San Francisco and Marin County. He founded Rolling Stone in 1967. Over the ensuing decades, Rolling Stone won many awards for its design, photography, public service, and journalism, and was instrumental in launching the careers of many groundbreaking journalists and photographers. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the youngest inductee ever in the American Society of Magazine Editor’s Hall of Fame, Wenner lives in New York City and Idaho.

About Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. He and Jann Wenner first met at Berkeley in 1964. Three years later Jann started Rolling Stone, a year after that Greil published his first record review there, and the next year Jann hired Greil as Rolling Stone’s first Records editor.

Greil Marcus

They have been in touch ever since. Greil went on to publish many books, from “Mystery Train:Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” in 1975 to “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs” in 2022. He has taught at Princeton, the New School University in New York, and in the American Studies Program at Berkeley since 2000. He lives in Oakland.

About the Series
The Chris Boskin Deans’ Speaker Series in Business and Journalism is made possible by a gift from Cal alum Michael Boskin to honor his wife, Chris Boskin. Chris, who serves on the advisory board of Berkeley Journalism, is also a proud Cal alum whose accomplishments include a prestigious career in magazine and newspaper publishing, leadership positions at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio, and her most recent role as co-founder of CALmatters.

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