Jane Pratt of Sassy magazine is back with a newsletter

Jane Pratt, the legendary editor of Gen X teen magazine Sassy, is back in business with a newsletter she says is aimed at just about everyone.

“It's for all ages, all genders,” she said. “I don't want to be classified as being only interested in certain things because I am 61 years old. I want to still have the same conversations with everyone.”

Pratt has built a following among fans for the spunk, irreverence and honesty she's brought to the magazines she's edited, starting with Sassy in the late '80s. It was known for tackling topics such as sex, politics and humor, at a time when its competitors often focused on boys and makeup.

Pratt was just 24 when she was hired to be its editor in chief and allegedly got the job because she was the youngest applicant. In her tenure there, she also favored first-person confessionals and community input, long before blogs and TikTok made these mainstream practices.

After nearly a decade of success, Sassy was absorbed into Teen Magazine. Pratt went on to launch the magazine Jane, and then the online publication xoJane.

Now, she's jumping back into content creation with a subscription-based newsletter on Substack called Another Jane Pratt Thing.

Pratt joined WNYC’s Alison Stewart on a recent episode of "All Of It" to discuss Sassy, Substack and more. An edited version of their conversation is below.

Alison Stewart: Jane, why did you decide to get back in the game?

Jane Pratt: It's tongue in cheek to say “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” but it is. If I felt like everything that I set out to do with Sassy magazine 38-something years ago was all taken care of, I would just go and live a nice quiet life. I feel like there's still some of the same things that I was pushing the boundaries on back then and getting in trouble for and starting conversations about, that are still problems or are back as problems. I feel like there's still a need for really open, nonjudgmental conversation around tricky topics.

Who do you see this Substack for?

Back when I was starting, I didn't want to make a publication that was strictly for women. We were advertising-driven, so the advertisers were supporting it. I had to fit a certain niche and say, “It's for women 18 to 49,” just so that we would attract the advertisers that wanted that audience. I always felt like it's very arbitrary and old-fashioned to say it's a magazine for women or women's media. What does that even mean?

Doing this on Substack, it's not advertising-driven. I have no corporate backers or anything like that that I have to answer to in that way. I was able to do it the way that I want to do it, which is to say it's for all people. It's for all ages, all genders.

As I get older, too, I don't want to be classified as being only interested in certain things because I am 61 years old. I want to still have the same conversations with everyone.

One of your guidelines is: Employ a bunch of freaks freakier than you.

Oh, yes. That's really key. I'm a freak. To find people freakier — they can be freaky in different ways, but that is a big component of the publications that I like to try to create. Having people who are very willing to be open about themselves and not just present a certain façade.

I find that if the people who are putting out the publication are willing to say, "I don't have all the answers," or, "I made this mistake. What would you do in this situation?" it's more welcoming for readers to say, “I get it. I can be part of this conversation too.”

How did you assemble your team?

This was funny. I loved this process so much. I looked at a lot of different places. I'm still pretty bad with social media, I have to admit. I put something on LinkedIn and I got the word out through Twitter and different places. I got people talking about the fact that something new was coming and I started getting applications from people. The ones that I have on staff right now are exactly the ones I would have wanted and the ones I would have even created in my own head.

This guy, Charlie Connell, who is just friggin' hilarious and phenomenal, who I didn't know of before. Vanessa DeLuca, who was at Essence magazine for many years, is also incredible. And someone named Ani Ferlise, who wasn't doing any of this kind of work. But that's also my favorite thing, to take someone who's not necessarily in the business and bring them in.

One of your rules — or guidelines, we'll say — is: Use your disdain to fuel your own adventures.

Oh. Yes, yes, yes. That's key. When I look at other publications or other media, if I feel like it's not serving people well — that's also partly why I like to have a platform, because I like to feel like, "OK, now I can go to Another Jane Pratt Thing and present this in a way that is more open-minded and more freeing for people." Whether it's seeing visuals of people that are overly photoshopped and wanting to change that, or people talking about people over a certain age as though they're not relevant anymore. I like to come in and combat that.

What made you learn that lesson, to use your disdain about something to fuel your passion?

I'm going to go way back. When I was 15 and I was at boarding school and I did not fit in, I would go to the newsstand and I would look at the magazines there, particularly Seventeen. I would be looking for some connection because I didn't have people around me that seemed like me. I was a complete scholarship kid from the South.

When I looked at these magazines, they exponentially didn't look like me and didn't seem to have the life that I had or the cares that I had or the worries or any of it. That was probably the first real example of me thinking, "Let me take this feeling that I have and turn it into something positive for other people." That instantly made me feel better knowing I could do that.

Where's the funniest place that someone has said to you, "Are you Jane Pratt from Sassy or from Jane?"

It happens. The funniest places are probably bathrooms. I like to have a good conversation in a bathroom. You don't have to rush off. You can stand there for a minute and talk.

You famously had ads pulled when you published controversial stories about gay teens, young women, sex, stuff you see nowadays. What did you learn from that experience and what are some of the topics you think you might cover on Another Jane Pratt Thing?

I did exactly what you said. Stuff on gay teens, stuff on birth control and stuff that caused us to lose the majority of our major advertisers all in one fell swoop. We also, because there was a boycott that was backed by the Moral Majority at the time, those people were going into their local newsstands and saying, "I won't shop here if you sell Sassy." We were taken off 70% of our newsstands also. That was a big blow.

You would think I would have said, "Jane, don't write about that stuff anymore. Take a step back." No, I haven't done that. I've figured out ways to be able to talk about that stuff and still make it commercially viable.

By the way, people can go onto Another Jane Pratt Thing for free also and see almost everything up there. That's how I'm doing it now without having to worry about how it will affect advertisers or newsstands or whatever.

When you sit down and you think about your editorial principles, what are they? What's important to you?

Most of all, honesty. When I say that, I don't mean authenticity. I don't mean appearing to be real. I mean actual honesty, which is a harder thing to find and more difficult for writers and people to produce, because everyone has their things they want to cover for or how they want to appear.

One of my rules always has been to write the way that you talk. A lot of my time is spent saying, "Would you really say that if you were saying that to a friend? Is that the wording you would choose?"

The classic ones are things like, if you're writing about beauty stuff, you don't say “tresses” or you don't say “mane,” you say “hair.” That's one example. Getting people to write the way that they talk is a big one for me.

How often do you think about how is this going to stand out? Because there's so much content right now.

It's an experiment for me right now to see if really following all of these policies about integrity and honesty and exposing things that other people might not be exposing, to see if that still can resonate with people and make an impact when there is so much out there.

Going into this, I can't say, "I know for sure," but it's been really gratifying to see the people that are coming forward and saying, "Yes, I remember this. I remember this tone, this voice. This is what I need. This is what I grew up with and now my daughter can have this."

I don't try to stand out. I try to be true to what we're doing.

You have a daughter in college. What gives you hope for her?

She's amazing. She has none of the insecurities that I had when I was her age. It's really incredible. What gives me hope for her specifically is what an individual she is and how proud she is to be an individual and how much she is not trying to fit into any kind of mold that she's seeing out there and how incredibly open-minded and nonjudgmental she is about other people and how curious she is. I think that's a really big one, because I think if you're curious, it really fuels a lot.

What gives me hope in the world, I hope that things will keep changing in the right direction.