There was its infamous Duke Lacrosse case, which resulted in the magazine settling a lawsuit . Then, last year, Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman was accused of omitting a key fact from a story — namely, that a journalist had been raided not due to government overreach, but as part of a federal investigation into child pornography.

Then there was the story about Oklahoma hospitals allegedly being overwhelmed by patients who the magazine claimed overdosed on the drug ivermectin to treat COVID. The story was garbage, with even the Washington Post writing the “bogus” story “was just too good to check.” (Full disclosure: Rolling Stone has also taken a few whacks at me.)

Now the magazine is criticizing “Rich Men North of Richmond,” the country song by Oliver Anthony that went supernova last week. The song is a lament about low wages and political corruption. But according to Rolling Stone, the song “is a passionate screed against the state of the country and right-wing influencers are very into it.” Reporter Joseph Hudak argues that the reason the song “is appealing to right-wing influencers” is that it “wades into some Reagan-era talking points about welfare” and even makes a reference to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his infamous island.

It’s a ridiculous take on a powerful and complex song. Like all other mainstream journalistic institutions, Rolling Stone has collapsed. Ideology has eroded creativity and critical thinking.

It’s a shame because Rolling Stone was once great — a magazine whose business model was one that modern conservatives would do well to emulate.

In 1970, Rolling Stone won a National Magazine Award for its coverage of the hippie apocalypse at the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California. The Stones famously mounted their own show and hired the Hell’s Angels for security. Rolling Stone fearlessly investigated the drug-fueled idiocy that led to chaos and four deaths. Calling it “Rock & roll’s worst day,” a Rolling Stone writer described the scene this way: “Flickering silhouettes of people trying to find warmth around the blazing track reminded one of the medieval paintings of tortured souls in the Dance of Death.”

The National Magazine Award praised the magazine for “challenging the shared assumptions of its readers.” Risking alienating its advertisers and core audience, Rolling Stone showed courage.

The Altamont coverage was an inspiration to an upcoming journalist named Hunter S. Thompson. In an undated letter from Thompson to Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, Thompson observed: “Your Altamont coverage comes close to being the best journalism I can remember reading, by anybody.”

As revealed in Like a Rolling Stone, magazine founder Jann Wenner’s newly published memoir, the magazine once attracted and developed the greatest journalistic talent: Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, Ben Fong-Torres, Lester Bangs. These were obviously not conservatives, but, as the Altamont coverage showed, they could go against the liberal culture. When covering Watergate, for example, Thompson sought out Pat Buchanan, “the one person in the Nixon administration with a sense of humor.” The two met in Washington for beers.

Conservative P.J. O’Rourke was also a columnist for Rolling Stone in the 1980s. And in 1990, the magazine panned Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet,” a review that has stood the test of time: “Bon Jovi's band is barely functional: guitar solos pop up like afterthoughts, bass lines whine like spoiled children, and Jon Bon Jovi's voice is double- and triple-tracked in halfhearted attempts to cloak its blandness…Meat Loaf is subtle compared to these guys.”

As recounted in Like a Rolling Stone, Wenner used an investment of a few thousand dollars in 1967 to create what would become one of the greatest and most popular magazines in history. He did this by having a system of meritocracy in which only the best rose to the top.

Now, “the best” are ideologues posing as journalists who abuse the platform they’ve been given to lecture the rest of the country on how un-progressive we are — the exact kind of people Anthony warns about in his hit song.

It’s sad to see how Wenner’s empire has fallen. As much as there is to dislike about Jann Wenner — and there is a lot — he prized talent over all. That’s something he would have recognized, and appreciated, in Anthony.

Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of  The Devil's Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi . He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.