How To Get a Writing Gig

Easy, show up with some beer.

People who know me know my fondness for beer, preferably lager, chilled, and straight from the bottle.  I’ve written about the story of beer for this blog, and about its relationship to the invention of writing.   And so I was pleased to learn recently of yet another connection between beer and writing.

From the November 9 issue of The Writer’s Almanac:

The first issue of Rolling Stone was published on November 9, 1967. It was started by 21-year-old Jann Wenner, who dropped out of Berkeley and borrowed $7,500 from family members and from people on a mailing list that he stole from a local radio station, and with that money he managed to put together a magazine. The cover of the first issue featured John Lennon, and in it, Wenner wrote, "Rolling Stone is not just about music, but also about the things and attitudes that the music embraces." He printed 40,000 copies, and 34,000 were returned unsold. But soon Rolling Stone had a devoted group of readers, partly because there were some great writers there. Probably the most famous of these journalists was Hunter S. Thompson, who showed up at Jann Wenner's office in 1970 with a case of beer and an offer to write for Rolling Stone. [emphasis mine] The next year, he serialized Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the magazine's pages. Today Rolling Stone has a circulation of about 1.4 million.