Slain Jane
Issue #33
The incredible shrinking newsstand strikes again
By Carlye Wisel
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
As one of the few women’s magazines whose content stretched beyond advice on how to please a man in bed or what jeans flatter a pear-shaped figure best, Jane’s quirky, original content provided solace to girls in their late teens through early 30s interested in more than just blow jobs and blowouts.
“My favorite part of working at Jane is feeling like we aren’t selling crap to our readers, we are encouraging them to do good things with their wallets, bodies, and brains,” says former associate photo editor Ashley Macknica. “I will miss being asked to do things like Jell-O wrestle for a story — chances are slim that will happen at my next job.”
In early July 2007, rumors permeated throughout the blogosphere about the magazine’s surprise shutdown and were soon confirmed by a Condé Nast Publications statement that the magazine had not fulfilled its “long-term business expectations.”
Don’t just blame the suits for murdering Jane on the eve of her 10th birthday, though. When Sassy creator Jane Pratt left her namesake publication in 2005 and former ELLEgirl Editor-in-Chief Brandon Holley took over, some reader opinions seemed to change in sync with the magazine’s redesign efforts, creating a love-or-hate rift among its followers.
Between “The Jane Makeunder” stripping down a chosen girl’s pile of beauty products, “It Happened To Me” highlighting a lady’s woes in a short-essay format instead of an embarrassing moment blurb, and Pamela Anderson’s column putting another large asset of hers on display — her brain — Jane effectively channeled a friend-to-friend point of view with its relatable content, first-name bylines, one-liners, and stream-of-consciousness writing.
“You could go into work and be yourself,” says former accessories editor Christina Turner. “I once walked in with this Beastie Boys 1987 tour shirt that on the back of it said, ‘Get Off My Dick’ in big, yellow, bold letters, and I just wore that.” She added, “I had no pressures of looking a certain way, [or] talking a certain way.” How Jane.
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