PressEthic

There are problems at Jane magazine HQ. As reported in today’s New York Post, staff members are not finding the transition from editor-in-chief Jane Pratt to new editor Brandon Holley a smooth one. According to the Post, four staff members have quit recently, and one insider complained that the magazine was headed towards a more mass market in spite of the fact that “that’s never what Jane was about.”

I am not surprised that the magazine is experiencing difficulty, because ever since I started reading it on a somewhat regular basis the quality of the magazine seems to have been on a steady decline. Many of Jane’s devoted readers often have nothing nice to say about it, and I could include myself in that group most of the time. It is almost prerequisite to criticize Jane for not being nearly as good as its predecessor, the hipper, less mainstream Sassy.

I think that what has gone wrong with Jane is that it suffers from an identity crisis. It wants to be edgy, snarky, and irreverent, but in the end it also wants to make money, and therefore has to often (transparently) make editorial choices based on advertisement placement. I remember, for example, when Jane got a “new look” a while ago that had the whole staff patting themselves on the back over. Trouble was, it clearly had been redesigned in order to make more room for articles that would push products on its readers. A whole new boring section was added that lined up pages of new items the reader could buy, similar to a fashion or style magazine.

Jane’s future seems unpromising right now, though I hope that they somehow make it out of this switch-over without completely changing the magazine. Although it's the magazine that readers love to hate, we keep reading it for a reason. There really aren't any other magazines out there that are in the same category as Jane. And they used to do an OK job, but lately the writing, especially the celebrity-fawning (Paris Hilton is so down to earth!) interviews, have become unbearable. I noticed that it has been sold at a reduced price at news stands for the entire summer.