At the age of 15, Tavi Gevinson was the prodigy founder of Rookie, a latter-day second-coming of Sassy Magazine -- a smart, funny, critical teen magazine that presaged the odd world we live in now, when magazines like Teen Vogue have become highly politicized.
Rookie is must-read material, and its annual collections were some of the best books in print, year after year.
Seven years later, Gevinson has a burgeoning acting career (she's very good), and a heavy heart about her online creation. Rookie has been a victim of the mediapocalypse, in which the majority of advertising money has been creamed off by the social media platforms, who control access to audiences and bat small, cash-strapped media business around like cat toys, demanding that they "pivot to video" or some other bullshit.
As her business became more fraught, Gevinson resigned herself to raising investment capital, only to discover that the process presaged a future where she would hate her life and her publication: relentless pressure to grow; endless meddling from investors with conflicting, uninformed advice; high stakes and with them, pressure to compromise on matters of principle.
What's more, Gevinson's been doing Rookie since she was 15 and now she's 22. Realizing your girlhood dream is cool: being trapped in it once you're a woman is a little chafing.
The upshot of all of this is that Gevinson is folding up her publication.
I'm heartbroken, though I completely sympathize. Though I didn't start work on Boing Boing as a teenage, I have been working on this project for nearly 18 years now, which is a fuck of a long time. Read the rest
