What Not To Read Here

I hope you’ll just love this site — besides 2 little things. (I know “hope” is not a good manifesting word, and I’m sorry about that, universe.)

The amazingly wonderful David Belisle took this photo of me at work, when I had — fortuitously and not coincidentally — had my hair done.

I am standing at a raised podium at an American Society of Magazine Editors luncheon in a ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in my pink suit (with shorts and a big white satin bow), looking out at all the other Editors in Chief in the audience (most of whom are now dead — sad). They each have a copy of my first magazine, Sassy, in front of them, and, while I am speaking, they are turning to the page where I have written my first “editor’s letter.” I stop in the middle of my flash-card pile (2 1/2 years out of Oberlin all I knew to use was my standard college study habit) to interject something about how I would love it if they would skip past that page, because I spent so much effort on the rest of the magazine and just jotted that down quickly in the 10 minutes or so before it had to go out to the printer. The editor’s letter was not what I wanted to represent what Sassy was. People laughed (knowingly? Jadedly? That’s how I interpreted it). 

This is me and my coworker Ani (who you will get to know a lot more here), walking down the lane. That David Belisle guy was watching us and took this flattering photo.

Here I am again, 38 years later, still Editor in Chief, still starting a new publication, and still rush-writing this note to you at the very last minute after everything else is done (or as done as it is going to get today). I am proud of this site, in particular because it is the first publication I’ve worked on that isn’t advertising supported or supported through product sales or backed by anyone. Thanks, Substack. But mostly thank you, Vanessa and Esther and Charlie and Ani, who all came to work with me on this kook project when there was no publishing platform involved, no audience, no community, and no revenue. (There still isn’t, but I know you’re about to change that, thank you!)

These are the most brilliant, talented, unique, smart, gorgeous, special editors and writers I think I have ever convened — along with Sassy, Jane and xoJane staffs, of course. If you don’t know them already, you are going to love them. I also want to mention some non-staffers I am particularly thrilled to have on this site, and they are named Christina Kelly (can you believe how long the two of us have worked together?? We can’t), Cat Marnell (we also have a one-of-a-kind work history together, and she's better than ever now), and Feminista Jones (whom I’ve never gotten to work with and am absolutely thrilled to have with us).

We all agreed we wanted to do this — create a place for stories by folks of all genders, races, sexualities, creeds, sizes, cultures, ages, classes, kinks, quirks, and ports of call — enough that we would just go for it, make it worker-owned and split any revenue evenly between us. (Then I made everyone crazy by pushing to launch this earlier than we would have because of the state of things and wanting to have a platform to do whatever we can at this critical time. More on that to come. Go, Kamala.) 

Having said that, there are two things on this site I would love for you to overlook. It would probably be appropriate and smart here to mention and link to all the things about this site that you should make sure to check out, but I know you are going to read all of it anyway (right? Thank you if you do and it’s totally fine if you don’t), so instead here’s what to ignore. 

1. Some of the fonts. After a lot of stomping my feet and pointing out the editor on Substack who got to design and execute and customize (and all those lovely, lovely words that an editor loves to hear) her site exactly the way she wanted, I was still left with no extra bonus freedom for making this site the ridiculously detailed and grandiose way I wanted. We were to use standard templates, and we have only FIVE font options. If I raised the issue of how much I wanted different fonts — I would pay for them and everyone else on the platform could use them! Please! — one more time with the lovely Christina Loff at Substack (whose writing I also love so much and here is some of it), well I don’t know exactly what would’ve happened, but that was just an expression to show you how many times during my "negotiations" I asked about fonts. Charlie laughed at me whenever I said the word by the end. 

The other thing I want you to ignore (besides some of the FONTS): 

2. White space around the main headline. Why? 

If you even got this far in the post and care at all about this inside-baseball crap, I love you. And I hope (OK, I'm not manifesting shit the way I'm going here) you like it or don't like it or like parts of it, and tell me all of that. And the main thing I want to say is that I am so so happy — and lucky and grateful — to be back with you. Thank you the most of all. 

xo Jane