Jane Pratt was the founding editor of Sassy magazine. She started the magazine in 1988 and it quickly became a bible for teenage girls across the country. The magazine folded in 1994 and Jane went on to be the editor of Jane magazine, a publication geared at the Sassy girls that had now grown into their 20’s and 30’s. Jane had a ten year run from 1997 to August of 2007. Currently Jane is the editor of the online publication: xoJane and is the host of Jane Radio on Sirius XM Radio.

I interviewed Jane Pratt for the Fall, 1997 issue of fishwrap. As you can hear, I got the exclusive interview about her (then) upcoming magazine, Jane, before anyone else, which was really cool! In the interview we discuss Sassy magazine, women’s magazines, we discover that Jane Wiedlin is our favorite Go-Go, celebrity feature writing and what her vision was for Jane magazine. The interview starts out with me asking her about other Janes in pop culture and history, which ran as a sidebar piece to the interview. This is one of my favorite interviews because we really had a lot of laughs together!

Oh yeah, and I asked her if the fishwrap staff would be invited to Jane’s launch party and she said, “Of course!” Sadly, the invitation never came.

Anyway, here’s my 1997 interview with Jane Pratt!

Related links out there on the interwebs: xoJane on Twitter, Sassy Magazine Lives, Jane Pratt on Twitter and Jane Pratt—Still So Sassy - NYT.

The MP3 files for the interview were digitized from the original cassette tapes by The MP3 files for the interview were digitized from the original cassette tapes by MEDIAHOUSE. Find out more about them by clicking here.