Will Dana will step down as the managing editor of Rolling Stone, the magazine announced on Wednesday.
His exit comes months after the publication came under scrutiny for publishing an article that recounted an alleged gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia campus. After the article was published in November 2014, questions were raised about its accuracy.
When asked by the New York Times if Dana’s departure was related to the controversy around the now-retracted article, A Rape on Campus, Rolling Stone’s founder Jann S Wenner said that “many factors go into a decision like this.” He also praised Dana as “one of the finest editors I have ever worked with”.
“After 19 years at Rolling Stone, I have decided that it is time to move on,” Dana said in a statement released Wednesday night. “It has been a great ride and I loved it even more than I imagined I would. I am as excited to see where the magazine goes next as I was in the summer of 1978 when I bought my first issue.”
Dana’s last day at Rolling Stone will be 7 August. His successor has not yet been named.
Dana’s departure was announced just hours after three graduates of University of Virginia and members of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity filed a defamation lawsuit against the magazine, its publisher and journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely over the 2014 article.
Wenner Media declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The 9,000-word article was retracted and removed from Rolling Stone’s website on 5 April. It was replaced with a report from the Columbia Journalism School reviewing the story and its faults.
After the report was released, Dana apologized “to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students”.
At that time, the Virginia Alpha chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity issued a statement announcing that it planned to pursue “all available legal action against the magazine”.
The magazine, Wenner media and Erdely are also being sued by the university’s dean Nicole Eramo, who is seeking $7.85m in damages.
