Ira Glass Is Tavi Gevinson’s Magazine Fairy Godfather

by Verena von Pfetten | 4:53 pm, August 31st, 2011

And Tavi Gevinson‘s star just keeps on rising. Today, the New York Times published a preview of a feature they’re running in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine profiling the 15-year-old blogger and founder of her soon-to-be-revealed Sassy redux, Rookie. Tavi comes across as equally down to earth as she is intelligent, but it’s the thoughtfulness with which she’s approached her new project, as well as the special role one Ira Glass played in getting it off the ground, that has us genuinely in awe.

Tavi revealed a few more details about Rookie, namely how the web and print publication will be structured.

The online magazine will consist of monthly themed issues organized around three posts a day (as well as two print issues per year). The first post will appear after school, the second at dinnertime and the third “when you do your last Facebook check around bed or whatever,” Gevinson said. Of course, there are practical reasons for this schedule: “I’m in school, and I can’t be at my computer all day.”

Clever! But also: what about us old geezers who will be looking for stuff to keep us entertained at our desks all day? What about us?!

The paper also shared a heartwarming anecdote in clearing up those messy rumors that Tavi had a falling out with original Sassy editrix Jane Pratt. Both Tavi and her father confirm there is no bad blood between the two and that the decision to move forward without Pratt-backer Say Media was to ensure the teenage phenom would retain all ownership — advice that apparently came from someone who just had Tavi’s best interests at heart.

While negotiating with Say, they were helped by Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life,” whom they met through his wife, Anaheed Alani, the story editor for Rookie (and a former freelance fact-checker for The New York Times Magazine). Glass held nightly phone calls to advise the Gevinsons. “I was concerned that someone was looking out for her,” Glass says. (Gevinson, it seems, has a knack for attracting champions.)

Can we have a fairy Ira Glass godfather, too?

How Sassy Is Tavi Gevinson? [NYT]

ira glass Jane Pratt Tavi Gevinson