Jane folds, doesn’t let the door hit it in the ass on the way out

As the editor of a financially-struggling magazine, I’m in no position to gloat over another rag’s demise. It’s a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god situation that just reeks of questionable karma.

And that said: This morning’s news that Jane magazine has folded brought me a burst of unseemly glee.

We at Bitch have never made our dislike of Jane a secret. The cooler-than-thou tone, the celebrity ass-kissing and name-dropping, the fact that founder Jane Pratt actually established a regular column where readers could advise her on high-class problems like whether or not to stop seeing her therapist—the list of offenses sometimes seemed endless. (In fact, a Bitch article that’s a been a reader favorite for more than six years is “Ten Things To Hate About Jane,”, in which we pondered the suckage point by point.)

As we wrote in that piece, the reason Jane was so disappointing an endeavor was that it purported to be so much more. Pratt lured in a generation still mourning the demise of its beloved Sassy with promises of a smart magazine geared toward feminist-minded women—a magazine that wasn’t going to pander to its readers with the feel-bad tactics endemic to other women’s magazines.

Shortly thereafter, of course, the pandering began. There was the ceaseless advertorial. There were the countless fashion and beauty directives. There were the dark years when Pratt tried to convince us all that Pamela Anderson was a Steinem-esque role model by giving her a monthly column. Perhaps the most depressing thing about Jane was that even in the past few years, as Pratt left the helm and the magazine scrambled to bring ad sales and circulation up by slapping the plastic likes of Paris Hilton and Ashlee Simpson on its covers, it still persisted in trying to convince readers of its edginess and feminist cred. Even the magazine’s final, craven bid for readers—conducting an online search for a guy ready and willing to devirginize a 30-year-old Jane reader—was flogged endlessly for its supposed shock value.

I can’t lie—I’ll miss ragging on Jane. But am I truly happy it’s gone? In a weird way, no. If the fall of Jane says anything about the mainstream magazine market, it’s that a thinking woman’s magazine—even when it’s not thinking all that hard—is too tough a sell for an industry that’s stopped even pretending it cares about anything other than selling ads. And that sucks for all of us. So lift your can of Sofia Mini and sprinkle a little on Jane’s fresh grave: Rest in peace, namedropper.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Advertising, Commercialism, Feminism, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.