If I had a dollar for every time a magazine hyped a story to sell issues, I’d be a billionaire.

I guess hypotheticals aren’t Rolling Stone’s forte. Its current issue trumpets me as a “baby billionaire,” which, if you tally my liquid assets and exclude gross liabilities, is off by approximately a billion dollars.

The magazine knows that the entrepreneurs profiled in the piece aren’t billionaires, because for its feature sidebar it asked us the first thing we would buy if we had a billion dollars. I said “early retirement for everyone who helped get me there” (followed by donations to every cause I support) but that didn’t get published. I guess I should have said something more printable, such as “AN ENORMOUS YACHT ENCRUSTED WITH THE CRYSTALLIZED TEARS OF MY FALLEN COMPETITORS.”

I also find it strange that the same sidebar posits each company’s “buyout prospects” based on the amount of capital it has raised. For example, apparently the “buyout prospects” for Plaxo are: the company has raised $25 million. If funding is the telling metric, Friendster executives must be salivating.

This tale of a “secret society” of “baby billionaires” was originally pitched to us as a look at the ideas, principles and work habits that unite young entrepreneurs. I nonetheless anticipated the possibility of another BusinessWeek debacle and asked to see a preview of the article before publication. The editor never responded to me, but the photo editor told me that the magazine’s policy forbids previewing.

This is not surprising. Most publications don’t allow previews because it might tarnish their reputation if they’re seen to be soliciting the approval of their subjects. That’s fine if they do their job—and many do. But when they don’t, when the fact checkers are high on the scent of cash, our reputations are tarnished instead.

Is it any wonder that the pictures for this feature were shot in a Palo Alto hangout called the Nuthouse?