Two very different magazines for women hit the stands in the spring of 1988. “Sassy” revolutionized the teen magazine category with frank discussions and attitude. However, advertising revenue didn’t keep pace and the magazine folded in 1996. Aimed at older women, “Lear’s,” magazine was founded by s Lear with divorce settlement money from television producer Norman Lear. It ceased publication six years later, in early 1994.
From The Tribune, Monday, March 7, 1988:
For women’s eyes only
Magazines take aim at new markets — after 14, after 40
By Jack Williams, Staff Writer
ON ITS MAIDEN voyage into the restless teen-age psyche, Sassy magazine has charted a bold course. Forget the gee-whiz, fanzine frills — although there is enough celebrity schmoozing to indulge an MTV mentality.
This, in essence, is reading between the generations.
Practical, no-nonsense stuff. Like losing your virginity and coping with a friend’s suicide (although not all on the same day — or in the same story). And, on the lighter but no-less-vital side: how to flirt.
Make no mistake. Sassy is no sissy.
It is one of two slick, thick magazines with a clearly defined female audience to make its debut this month.
The other, Lear’s, is, as its cover proclaims, “for the woman who wasn’t born yesterday.” From Sassy’s Top 40, we go to post-40: the power generation.
Or as founder and editor-in-chief s Lear insists, the woman who “refused to take the ritual trek over the hill at 40.”
With an eye to the independent, sophisticated and successful, Lear’s seems to aspire to be a role model for the upscale woman seeking to rise above middle-age angst.
Among the subjects explored in the bimonthly’s debut issue: a profile of Philippines President Corazon Aquino and a piece by Anne Bernays on the secrets of a long marriage. (Her own — with biographer Justin Kaplan — has endured 34 years).
“We’re offering women an alternative to the youth chauvinism of Madison Avenue,” said Stephanie K. Blackwood, the magazine’s public relations spokesman. “Most women are not 20 years old, and it makes no sense to show them in a magazine geared to an older, upscale audience.”
The contents of Lear’s is based on a marketing survey of 1,000 women 35 and up, said Blackwood. Accordingly, the magazine will address such issues as success, finance, self-fulfillment and marriage, while leaving plenty of room for fiction, fashion and ments.
The March/April issue contains a whopping 76 pages of ads, 18 of them for automobiles that you won’t find in many middle-class garages.
The Lear’s reader may not change her own oil, but she’s particular about her transportation. (A story in the debut issue points out that women bought 45 percent of all new cars sold in America last year.)
Of the 200,000-plus charter subscribers, the average household income is a not-to-be-sneezed-at $92,000, according to Blackwood. Lear, the founder and ex-wife of entertainment impresario Norman Lear, is hoping to corner the marketplace on the above-40 women, of whom there will be a projected 54 million by the end of the decade.
In five years, the people at Lear’s are hoping to reach 500,000 homes. They’re already gloating over a 6 percent subscriber rate from their initial mailings, 4 percent above the national average, according to Blackwood.
Some of the less-secure women in their target audience, however, may feel a trifle turned off by the shameless emphasis on the middle-aged overachievers. Then, again, they may be inspired. Or, at least, entertained.
Sassy, on the other hand, is zeroing in on the 14-19 crowd, somewhere between Seventeen and Vogue. It never will be mistaken for a Lear’s Junior.
The title, in fact, was suggested by a 13-year-old girl and embraced by a magazine consultant, according to 25-year-old editor Jane Pratt.
Said Pratt: “I want all types of girls to see honest reflections of themselves (in Sassy). Not what their parents want, or what their teachers expect, or what they think they should be — but what they really are. Because we want them to feel good about what they are.”
Accordingly, the letters from readers will not be edited “to sound more literary,” Pratt insisted. And models will represent all races, shapes and sizes.
Every so often, the 30-person Sassy staff — its average age 26 — tries to brainstorm story ideas from the perspective of a 15-year-old, said Pratt.
“We talk about personal experiences or what our younger sisters or friends are concerned about.”
Future issues will include stories about a 19-year-old with AIDS, a 17-year-old girl stripper and — let’s not forget the lighter side — how to kiss.
“We want to be fun and entertaining as well as informative,” said Pratt, a former associate editor of Teenage Magazine who interned at Rolling Stone. “We’ll look at celebrities and new artists on the cutting edge, and we’ll be very opinionated about it.
“We won’t act like we love every person with a hit record, or that every celebrity lives a dream life. And our writers will talk about themselves in our stories.”
Indeed, their how-to-flirt piece is an informal discussion among staffers, including token male Neill McCutheon, associate art director.
The first monthly issue was sent to 250,000 subscribers, and there were 300,000 newsstand copies, said Pratt. Projected circulation by 1993: one million.
“There’s somewhat of a void (in the magazine market) for the older range of teens,” said Pratt. “A lot drop teen magazines at 15 and 16, and go on to Vogue or Cosmopolitan.”
Now they have a Sassy alternative.
