To a certain demographic in the Nineties and early 2000s the name Jane Pratt was as famous in publishing as Anna Wintour or Hugh Hefner. Starting with Sassy, then continuing with Jane and xoJane, Pratt became one of the few celebrities in publishing, hanging with rock stars like Courtney Love and Michael Stipe, appearing on MTV, VH-1 and more. She earned her well-deserved fame by standing up for issues like LGBTQ rights and abortion rights.
Now 62, Pratt is using her cache and name to start a new venture, “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” on Substack. Like all of her endeavors she works with a close group of trusted friends, like Stipe and actress Ione Skye as the Music Editor. As I found in my fascinating conversation with Pratt, she is still passionately fighting the good fight for independent thought and free speech in journalism. So, trust me, you won’t read anything written by AI on “Another Jane Pratt Thing.”
Steve Baltin: How much of the inspiration for “Another Jane Pratt Thing” was continuing these long-standing relationships, like with Michael Stipe for example?
Jane Pratt: These books I have behind me are books that he just sent me there. We have a mutual love of 1970s female empowerment, like self-help books. He finds them and he sends them to me like these. He’s one of my oldest friends. We’ve been friends for more than 40 years. [But]
I think I’ve been that way since starting Sassy, and I’ve said this before, but since even being a teenager and writing in my journal, “Oh, I want to start a magazine, but I want to do it with friends.” That’s always been the idea, working with people that you really like. This has been so fun to be able to get the gang back together. People from Sassy, people like Michael, Courtney, super gratifying.
Baltin: But what’s nice about it now is you have these relationships, but then you also have the name from having done all the magazines. So, you can create this thing where you can do it on your terms.
Pratt: Yes, that’s absolutely right. It’s been really fun to see both with the people that have come on board like Ione coming on board recently. That just happened because I’ve known Ben [Lee, her husband]
from back when I was starting Jane magazine. I remember going to parties at his place and just hanging out with him back then. Then he recently wrote to me and said Ione, his wife obviously, has a book coming out and would love for you to read it. Then she and I started talking and then it became obvious she should be the music editor for “Another Jane Pratt Thing.” It’s fun how it all comes back around. Then with the readers, it comes back around too because from the day that we launched, we had an incredible number of people who were there because they had been fans of Sassy magazine. They’d grown up with that or Jane or xoJane or whatever their connection was to it. And they wanted to not just read, not just join up with me again, but join up with each other. They feel like they are their people.
Baltin: I talk about this with artists all the time. When you release a song, it’s not yours anymore. The second d it goes into the world it belongs to the world. Do you feel like it’s that way then with the publication?
Pratt: One thousand percent. I always feel like all I’ve ever done is create a forum for people and give them maybe a spark of something that they might not already be thinking about, and then say you take it from here. Then they, whether it’s now in the comment section, just going on and on about it, or whether back in the Sassy days, it was actually writing in these handwritten letters in their pink and purple felt-tip pens, it’s so sweet. Yeah, I feel like I’m starting a conversation, but a certain kind of platform, a platform that says you can be whoever you are here. You are completely welcome. We’re completely supportive, inclusive and we’re sassy.
Baltin: But at the same time right now, it could not be more important. One of the reasons I wanted to do this interview was I was very interested to talk to you about the state of journalism in 2025, because there is no state of journalism in 2025. It’s pathetic.
Pratt: Oh yeah. Now, of course, we have all this AI stuff, which is really hurting the state of journalism. But I feel like it’s also at the same time created room for people like me who do the exact opposite of AI. It’s not about finding the common middle ground or the whitewash version and putting it out there, it’s about finding those weird quirks and celebrating those. So, I feel like when you read something now on “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” it doesn’t read like it could have been written by anyone other than that very specific person who wrote it, I feel like that’s more meaningful now. I also think one of the things that I’ve always done is to make the writers part of the story and their own personal lives and histories all come out through their stories. For example, Michael Stipe has contributed to all my publications but not talking about music. He did something about composting, or he did a fashion shoot where he modeled women’s clothes, showing different sides. Ione obviously to get her on board for as music editor is sort of unexpected. So, it shows different sides of people but making sure that everything that we publish is very unique to that. It could not be AI in any way. So that’s become increasingly important to me, and I get to see how people react to that and how much they gravitate toward it and want to engage with it and want to tell their own stories. I do most of my assigning now in the comments section or on social media when people reach out to me to tell me, “Oh, this story meant a lot to me.” Then they’ll give me a little germ of their own story as it relates to what we wrote about. They’ll say, “Oh yeah, something similar happened to me,” and then I’ll start writing back and forth with them and go, “Hmm, do you want to write about that?” So that’s how I’ve gotten a lot of my writers for this. Just all of us feeling comfortable enough to tell our own stories.
Baltin: I can see why you are friends with so many musicians. You definitely approach things from more of a musical standpoint, being more independent and rebellious. Do you find then, from the comments, that it’s similar to music where the more vulnerable you are, the more people respond?
Pratt: Yeah, no question. I wrote something about just for “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” I don’t know if this is even the best example, but I wrote something about my daughter, after having been such a proponent of you don’t need a boyfriend and what I’ve been preaching to girls since1988. Then all of a sudden, my own daughter, who’s just past her teen years, she just recently got with a great boyfriend and I was like, “Oh f**k, I feel too good about that. It makes me feel really good that she has a good boyfriend. So, anyway, I wrote about that and got a lot of good feedback from other feminists, who feel like, “Yeah, sometimes what we’re actually feeling seems in conflict with our feminism but is actually okay.”
Baltin: You’ve known Patti Smith for years too. Patti’s one of my greatest heroes in the world. We talked about it and to the rest of the world, she’s Patti Smith, this global icon. She’s like at home she’s just doing laundry, she’s mom. You’re never cool to your kids no matter what.
Pratt: She has never read anything from Sassy, not even one tiny sentence from an editor’s note or anything. Since you said that about Patti, it reminds me, as I was saying, I always am interested in showing people’s sides that you wouldn’t normally see. I know that she’s Patti Smith, but she’s also the person who when my dad was in a coma and I was trying really hard to figure out how to keep him alive, she talked to me about it, talked to me about what had happened with Fred and her brother, talked to me about letting go. Then she made a tea date with me every day that we would call each other.
Baltin: How is it different being on Substack?
Pratt: That’s been a real interesting difference with “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” is that I launched every other publication that I’ve done based on advertiser support. But at Sassy, I should have learned my lesson because at Sassy, about three months in, we lost our 15 biggest advertisers. The moral majority started a boycott against us because we wrote about gay teenagers and gave birth control information. So, I’ve been fighting with this whole how do you do what you want to do and have corporate backing at the same time for my whole career. So, starting this on Substack was the first time where it’s completely reader supported and it’s working on that level from a business standpoint.
Baltin: Traditional media is just being cannibalized internally. Do you feel like now this is becoming more important, and does it invigorate you?
Pratt: A thousand percent. I feel like so much of what spurs me to keep on doing what I’m doing now is seeing things like what Jeff Bezos has done, with The Washington Post. I feel terrible for the writers and the editors there because they’ve been great for so long. He’s just completely cut it down to being a promotional vehicle for himself and for Trump. When I see that, and I know that I have the platform to do the opposite of that, it fuels me for sure.