Critical history of American rock journalism in popular magazines, 1955-1976

This thesis is a critical documentation of the writing done about rock music from 1955-1976 in popular American magazines. The premises were 1) that rock music had a significant impact on American culture since its beginning in the mid-1950s and that this impact continued through the 1960s, and the social and political upheavals of that era, to the present day; and 2) that any social phenomenon of this magnitude deserves accurate documentation by the press and that since rock music is also an art form (albeit a folk or popular art), it deserved to be critiqued as such. Only a few of the seventeen magazines chosen for this study agreed with these premises.