Don’t write off blogger Tavi Gevinson as merely last year’s fashion fad just yet. She and Sassy founder Jane Pratt are teaming up to create a teen magazine. Gevinson’s adoration of the defunct but groundbreaking Sassy is well known, since she blogs about it constantly; Pratt got wind of it and e-mailed Gevinson, and they have met several times since, according to a blog post Friday by Gevinson.
Since the world has changed somewhat since Sassy bowed in 1988, the new effort won’t try to re-create Sassy but it will, in Gevinson’s words, “use Sassy as a point of reference for the whole teen-magazine-that-doesn’t-suck thing.” In proper Web 2.0 fashion, the publication will have a “‘for the people, by the people’ kinda vibe.”
A name has not yet been decided; there will be a Web site and three print issues a year.
“We hope to have the masthead finalized by the end of November,” said Gevinson in an e-mail. The Web site will launch this spring, followed by the first print issue in fall 2011.
Pratt hosts a talk show called Jane Radio on Sirius XM Radio, and in July put up a Web page at janepratt.com promising a new publishing venture set to make its debut “in the fall.”
This is not the same project, said Gevinson.
Anyone interested in contributing to the teen mag can e-mail Gevinson with ideas. “We want to find the best possible group of people for this project, and a wide range of ages, styles, etc.,” she blogged.