After seven years of sharing essays, art, advice, and writing for (and often by) teenagers, the online magazine Rookie Mag is shutting down. Launched by fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson in 2011 — when she was only 15 years old — Rookie attracted a million views in six days and went on to become an intimate, authentic, and feminist lens for its primarily young female audience to look at and speak to the world.
In a six-page editor’s letter that will be the last post on the site, Gevinson explains that “Rookie in its current form is no longer financially sustainable.” Although she considered alternatives — including selling the site to a larger media company, bringing on investors, or charging readers for subscriptions — she ultimately...
