Hazy Pop Cultural Memories: An Analysis of the Shifting Reader Receptions of the Prosumer Publishing of Jane Pratt from Sassy Magazine (1988-1996) to xoJane (2011-2016)

Abstract

This article will consider the publishing legacy of American editor Jane Pratt (b. 1962), both online and off. The American women’s lifestyle website xoJane (2011-2016) and the print magazine for teenage girls Sassy (1988-1996), both of which Pratt founded and edited, serve as the central examples for analysis. Positive audience receptions of Sassy are analysed against the more hostile responses to her later digital work. This is in order to understand how Pratt’s editorial work has developed in its shift from print to digital, and in audience, from teenage girls in the 1990s to adult women in the 2010s. This comparison is drawn with the aim of exploring shifting attitudes towards reader production. Here, xoJane’s prosumer model of digital production is compared and contrasted to Sassy’s DIY ethos of reader engagement. Whilst, elements of nostalgic readership that inform Pratt’s contested reception are explored. Finally, the impulse for, and limits of, authorial conclusion in digital spaces are considered in Pratt’s shifting of her first-person publishing format from print to digital.