From Feminists to Teenyboppers

By Laurence Zuckerman

The pairing seems about as likely as a business lunch between Author Germaine Greer and Pop Singer Tiffany: Ms., the feminist bible born of the political turmoil of the 1960s, and Sassy, the impudent primer for the latest generation of boy-crazy teenage girls. But Sassy Founder Sandra Yates and Ms. Editor Anne Summers are betting that the two magazines will be the foundation of a new media empire. Last week the two transplanted Australians signed a deal to buy Ms. and Sassy from their former employer, Australia's John Fairfax Ltd.

Fairfax's decision to sell the two magazines represents an abrupt about- face. It was only a year ago that the company, which is Australia's second largest publishing concern, dispatched Yates to the U.S. to create Sassy, an American version of Fairfax's fabulously successful Australian teen magazine Dolly. Last September, upon hearing that Ms. Founders Gloria Steinem and Patricia Carbine were looking for a new source of funding, Yates persuaded her Australian bosses to buy the magazine for a reported $10 million. She then installed Summers, a feminist historian and former chief of Fairfax's New York bureau, as editor.

But just as Sassy and the new Ms. were hitting the newsstands, Warwick Fairfax, the company's 27-year-old chief, decided to sell his fledgling American subdivision. At that point, Yates exercised an option to buy the two magazines. Yates and Summers are reluctant to disclose details of the purchase, but they insist that their backers, which include the State Bank of New South Wales and a major U.S. bank, have provided their new company, Matilda Publishing, with enough cash to get through the start-up period.

They will need it. Although a trailblazer when it was founded in 1972, Ms. (circ. 485,000) has never been a financial success. Advertisers have always been cool to the magazine, and "the editorial voice failed to move with the times," says Yates. In an effort "to reflect the pragmatism of women as they move into the 1990s," Yates and Summers embarked on an expensive make-over, increasing the magazine's size and introducing a less cluttered design.

Freed from editorial restrictions placed on it when it was published by a tax-exempt foundation, Ms. now features political coverage and a revamped news section. Current articles stress solid reporting and are deliberately less doctrinaire. "Ms. approaches the world with 'feminist' assumptions, but it doesn't mean we use the word in every sentence," says Summers. Despite these changes, the new Ms. is still in transition. "We are neither a workingwoman's magazine nor a traditional woman's magazine, nor a fashion magazine," declares Summers, unwittingly leaving the impression that she is far more certain about what Ms. is not than what it is.

Sassy has no such identity crisis. Pert, unnervingly frank and filled with clever asides from "Jane," "Catherine," "Karen," "Christina" and the rest of the staff, it has singlehandedly pioneered a new genre: pajama-party journalism. "The big question we ask is what would a 16-year-old want to learn that no one else would tell her," says Editor Jane Pratt, 25. After being presented with an idea, Pratt hashes it out with her equally young staff, and then, it often seems, simply publishes the text of the discussion. "It was a typical Wednesday morning meeting," begins a feature on flirting. "Elizabeth and Catherine were having their usual argument over who's better looking, Dweezil Zappa or Sting . . . And Jane had that I've-got-a-brilliant-idea look on her face. 'Why don't we do a story on how we flirt?' "

Sassy has tackled such topics as losing one's virginity ("If you don't feel like you can talk to your partner, then it's probably time to reconsider"), how to kiss (not too wet or too wide, and never with flavored lip-gloss) and the "Truth About Boys' Bodies" ("the average amount of semen per ejaculation is one-quarter of an ounce"). Sandwiched between the glossy but no-nonsense fashion pages and gushing paeans to the latest teen idols is at least one hard-hitting article, like the story of a teen whose best friend died of AIDS.

Pratt, who worked briefly at Teen and McCall's before being recruited by Yates, says Sassy is much more difficult to edit than its conversational tone would suggest. "Coming up with story ideas is still a stretch," she remarks, sitting in her uncluttered pink office overlooking Manhattan's Times Square. After only three issues, Sassy already has a circulation of 280,000, a figure Yates predicts will balloon to 1 million over the next five years. That would put Sassy in the same league as its chief competitors, Seventeen (circ. 1.86 million) and Teen (circ. 1.19 million), and make it much more successful than Ms. has ever been. Which prompts an obvious question: Will Sassy readers grow up to become Ms. subscribers? "I don't think there's a teenage girl who doesn't think she will have a worthwhile career and do anything a boy can do," says Yates, "so there certainly seems to be a lot of potential." Indeed, Yates is banking on it.

With reporting by Kathleen Brady/New York