The Rolling Stone ought to stick to music.
Michael Yon is a great primary source, along with military personnel blogs, and especially freerangeinternational.com/blog/ but the major publications are doing a better job than tv or newspapers.
Unfortunately, the magazine itself is an unreadable mess of advertising and perfume samples.
Thank you for answering a question I'd had for some years now, as to how VF became a source of serious long-form journalism.
[for comparison, here's the NYT version (which I believe is in large part based on Playboy) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/us/politics/20data.html?_r...]
The reason, I suspect, is that they force their writers to be entertaining. Not only does this mean people read and appreciate the long-form articles (and thus build demand for more of them), but it forces the writers to properly get to grips with their subject.
A lot of self-consciously 'serious' investigative journalists put far too little emphasis on turning their research into an engaging story. I was talking to one last week, who seemed almost offended by the idea that he might use 'narrative tricks' to engage readers in his articles. He's won many awards, but little public attention -- and IMO it's precisely because he doesn't consider himself an entertainer.
RS reports it as some sort of secret hitsquad the government is trying to cover up. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/calling-bullshit-on-rolling...
I personally have been looking for the name of the writing style used in certain articles posted to HN (from Atlantic Magazine, Vanity Fair and few others) since I really enjoy reading these types of articles and they seem to push certain psychological buttons making an engrossing and interesting (not to mention easy to remember) read.
Now I know this writing style is called "narrative journalism" :)