Jane Pratt's State of Media

For nearly four decades, Jane Pratt has been media's patron saint of teenage girls. As the founding editor of Sassy magazine, Pratt created a tangible space for young women to read — and most importantly, feel heard — about topics that actually mattered to them. And nothing was cooler: It had an in-house band; the fashion shoots felt relevant to everyday life; Chloë Sevigny was an intern.

“The cultural impact with Sassy was, ‘Let's take teenage girls seriously. Let's recognize that they have more on their minds than just their hair and getting a boyfriend, and let's talk to them that way and talk to them about things that other people weren't talking to them about and do it in their language,’” Pratt says. “I mean, clearly, there was a cultural impact because there was a cultural backlash, and then the magazine ended up getting shut down.”

Pratt, now 62, continued to launch projects for women at every stage of their lives, with Jane magazine, xoJane, and now, Another Jane Pratt Thing, a community-driven Substack about to celebrate its first anniversary. “There are plenty of people in the community who make the joke to me that I should call this Saggy, and that they need something now that they're in perimenopause and menopause,” Pratt says. “And it does span that. I'm so thrilled to be able to give older people that same kind of respect.”

Storytelling in the age of the internet is ever-evolving — but so is Pratt. Over the course of two interviews, held six months apart, I picked her brain on everything from writers as influencers, celebrity press tours, and the comments section. Here, Pratt tells all on her state of media — except for the stories she’s saving for her forthcoming memoir, of course (more on that below).

You started Sassy for teen girls, and Jane took the reader to the next stage of adulthood. Who was Another Jane Pratt Thing built for?

The truth is I've had one really good idea my entire career. That's it. And I just keep doing it and doing it and doing it again. Each time I do it, though, it broadens — the audience broadens and the scope of it and the numbers broaden.

For Sassy, it was about creating this place that was not just inclusive and accepting of everyone, but really celebrating all the quirks and patting ourselves on the back for being really different. And Jane was the same thing, but it went for a slightly older audience. xoJane went for a broader audience than that, partly because it was digital. And now, Another Jane Pratt Thing is even the broadest of all, because I'm not focused on one specific gender or one specific age. It's the same message of, "Come here and be exactly who you are and we love you for it" — and showcasing a lot of people who live that.

When you went from Jane to xoJane, what was the transition of print to digital like for you? And how is it now as you navigate another new platform?

When I switched to xoJane, that was a huge learning curve, because I hadn't really done much in digital. We were cranking out 15 to 20 posts a day, so I wasn't able to read everything that went up on the site or get really down in the nitty-gritty and perfect everything and make it look aesthetically exactly how I wanted. A lot of things went up that I then had regrets about putting up. It was a very live-and-learn-as-you-go kind of experience.

But now, the interesting thing with Another Jane Pratt Thing is that it goes back, in many ways, to the way that I worked when I was doing Sassy, because I have such a tiny team and I'll get really involved. I find the writers, or they'll DM me something that will show me a little spark of something that I think might make them a great writer or have a great story, and I just go back and forth with them constantly until we build them into a writer, basically.

You’re in the CMS.

Oh, I'm living in that CMS. With xoJane, I didn't even know how to use it, basically. But now I am heavily in there. You can tell it's me in there sometimes, because the caption font will be wrong or something — I'm not that good at it.

Who were the first few contributors you reached out to?

There were certain key people I really wanted involved: Cat Marnell, just because she was such a big part of xoJane and we kind of grew up there together; Christina Kelly, who I always say if we were the Rolling Stones, I'm the embarrassing Mick Jagger out there and she is Keith Richards actually really doing the good, integrity-laden work. Also on that early list was Jessamyn Stanley, who is just wonderful and has a lot to say. Michael Stipe had to be part of it, of course, because he's my oldest best friend. Same with Courteney Cox, who is contributing now, too. But those are givens.

“Let me start by saying, but I don't hire people who are already considered influencers.”

Cat Marnell was one of the original writers who then became an internet persona. Now, that’s almost the expected outcome. Have you noticed that shift?

Let me start by saying, I don't hire people who are already considered influencers. That's not interesting to me. What's interesting to me is finding Cat Marnell, or some of the people I found for Jane, Sassy, or some of the people I've found now for AJPT, and turning them into influencers, into people with big followings that people care about. That's the thrill for me.

I also see now how important it is to not just write your story and put it out there, but to stay with it in the comments and on social. My brother writes a home-advice column for me called "I'm Jane's Brother and I'm Here to Help," and it's really great. But he drives me crazy because he won't just go in right after he writes something and interact immediately in the comments and on his Facebook and this and that. To me, the story has just started when you've posted.

How important is networking and attending all of the media events to you these days?

I end up having a lot of nighttime events and go to things because what the hell? Good stuff comes out of them, right? You kind of think, "Oh, why am I going to this thing?" And then you go and you meet this incredible new writer or whatever it might be. I'm constantly out with people 40 years younger than me.

Speaking of younger people, do you ever ask your daughter for feedback? She's almost the age that you were when you started Sassy.

She's never read a word of Sassy. The only part of Jane I think she's ever looked at is the one where she was born and the name in the spine of the magazine. She has no interest in it. But she'll be here a lot when I'm working and she has a really good editorial sensibility. The other day, I couldn't think of a headline for something, and she heard me talking to one of my editors trying to concoct it, and she said something and I was like, "That is the perfect headline."

Another thing that’s shifted is celebrity access and how they view traditional press — like for certain promo cycles, they’ll only want to dress or look a certain way, which can be limiting.

I remember the good old days when I could take Pam Anderson — and this was before she did her own make-under —and put her on the cover of Jane with no makeup, which she didn't love at the time. You could transform people, and that was really fun.

She was also a columnist for you at one point, right?

Honestly, a great columnist. I'd love to get her back involved with AJPT..

Have you reached out to Chloë Sevigny, your former intern?

I ran into her not that long ago. We hugged, and that was fun and everything, but I haven't talked to her specifically about this project. I'm definitely going to. I'm just trying to figure out the right way to feature her.

I am curious about what your own kind of media diet is these days. What are you reading? Who do you think is doing a cool job?

This is so old-school, but I read the print editions of the New York Times and the New York Post every day. I just still love them. I like what Lauren Sherman is doing. I follow Pam Anderson on Substack. It's a range. Patti Smith is an old, old friend, and I follow everything she does — it's so uniquely her, and I love that. So it's a big mix. And I love Nylon, of course.

That’s very sweet of you.

Of course. And Vanity Fair, I still find a lot of great stuff. And The Atlantic. With those, I'm kind of covered, I think.

“It's been 25 years, maybe, and I still hear from people that she holds a grudge.”

IIs there a story you did that you regret doing?

In my whole life?

In your whole life.

One that I regret doing was a story that Michael Rapaport wrote about Natasha Lyonne for Jane, and it was about her addiction, basically. It was about her life. And she's someone I had been friendly with. And I guess I didn't give enough thought as to how that would've been [for her]. I was going through a lot of my own stuff at the time. So I published it. It's been 25 years, maybe, and I still hear from people that she holds a grudge. So yeah, too bad.

Is there any story you regret not doing?

Oh, yeah. We had this great story for xoJane. We had it, this video of this woman as she went through her abortion. She videoed the whole thing, and I was told by the higher-ups I couldn't run it, and then Cosmo ran it and I was so pissed. I was like, "See, you guys? They did. They still have advertisers."

Are there any stories that you haven't been able to do your whole career, but have wanted to and are now resurrecting?

Mostly stories of my own that I still haven't told. As more people die, the more I'm ready to tell more.

Do you think you'll do it on the site or will it be a memoir?

Both. The memoir is still about a year out, but I've written a ton of it and I think it's going to be really surprising to people. It's not a typical media behind-the-scenes Condé Nast story, even though there’s that too, of course. It's a lot of really personal stuff I've been through that I've never talked about, so it's vulnerable.

Where does one even begin when trying to write your own memoir?

I thought of my life in different chunks, and it does parallel with work stuff. It [starts] where I got the idea for Sassy when I was 15 and then builds from there. It's intense, because to write it down, I'm reliving all of it — and some of it was not fun.

Did you keep journals over the years, or is everything pulled from your memory?

It is totally relying on memory, but it's weird how when you focus on a certain phase of your life, it all comes back. It's intense, but there's also a lot of funny stuff about when I left Jane, and people have no idea what actually happened there. I look forward to settling some scores, vendettas, that kind of thing.

And you’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of AJPT. How has the site evolved over the past year?

It’s become much more written by the readers because they're forthcoming. In the comments, they will go into things, telling their own stories. And then often I'll take those and I'll make them into feature stories. Substack is, in general, a very nice community, so I had to tell them at one point that I wanted them to fight more — I wanted them to disagree more and really get into it. Now it's a little more antagonistic, in a good way.

People in [our] community are turning out to have incredible voices, incredible charisma, and maybe are the new It Girls.

Looking at the site, you can definitely see that it’s more community-driven than what you thought it would be even six months ago, which was more contributor-based. Is that accurate?

Completely. By the way, I heard this is going to run in your It Girl Issue?

It is!

I brought that up because I feel like I've helped launch a ton of It girls. I went and I looked up a list on Wikipedia of It girls and out of 20 of them, there are three that I was the first to bring out or feature — Chloë [Sevigny], Cat Marnell, and Pamela Anderson. She was already well known for Baywatch, but I took her and I gave her a make-under and gave her a writing column and showed that different side. So I can't really take credit for that because that was a long time ago. Anyways, what I'm finding is it’s not necessarily all the people that I thought were going to be the stars of [AJPT] — it's people in the community who are turning out to have incredible voices, incredible charisma, and so maybe they are the new It Girls.

What’s consistent across all the stories is that people still want to know your take on it, whether it's in the comments or in your editor’s note. Do you ever feel that the focus is too much on you?

I’ve been concerned about that since Sassy. I mean calling a magazine, Jane, I was really concerned about that, and I never liked the name xoJane, but whatever. And then calling this Another Jane Pratt Thing was like, “Here we go again, but at least I'm making fun of it.” The only reason I don't worry about it so much is because most of what I put on there is my reactions and my take on other people, and if the readers actually ask for more about myself, I'm going to go more in that direction. And that's the idea behind the memoir too. That’s what's actually going on with me.

How are you determining what's going on AJPT and what's going in the memoir?

There's definitely overlap. There's definitely things that have been sparked by stuff on Another Jane Pratt Thing that the readers wanted to know more about that I've said, "OK. That's something to go into the memoir.”

Do you also have to factor in the stories to save for the press tour — like, “What anecdote am I going to tell for Watch What Happens Live?”

Courteney Cox, who's one of my best friends, and I have this thing where whenever we're each doing any kind of talk show or whatever, we call each other and we're like, "OK, let's come up with another good story. Used that one already." So yes, that's when you have to come up with the funny one, but I feel my best when I'm being an open book. I feel like I ask other people to do it every single day to reveal things about themselves, and I tell them it'll be cathartic, and so for me to do it for myself is like a gift to myself too.

What is the secret to compelling storytelling on the internet today?

Just not being too careful. I see a lot of media really wanting to still appeal to other people in the media and being careful. I see it in a lot of the memoirs that have come out since I've been reading those, and in a lot of the Substacks. Making mistakes is great and just letting it all be a live experience where everything's not perfect by the time it gets down on the paper or sent out by email or whatever.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.