Can Rookie’s Redesign Serve as a Road Map for Increasing Reader Engagement?

When high school style blogger Tavi Gevinson co-founded Rookie Magazine in 2012, she wanted it to be what Sassy had been for a previous generation, a kind of indie alternative for the girls who didn’t see themselves in the pages of Seventeen. So Gevinson gave it her deprecating, wise-child voice, encouraged reader submissions—the majority of the site’s content is still created by teenage girls—and spoke to that awkward, funny, smart girl who has no idea how cool she actually is. In this way, Rookie was to teen magazines what Girls was to TV.