Can a magazine named Jane succeed with an editor named Brandon? We’ll soon find out – Brandon Holley, currently editor of Hachette Filipacchi’s ELLEgirl, has just been appointed editor in chief of Fairchild’s Jane magazine.

Jane, of course, was the brainchild of Jane Pratt, now 42, who founded the magazine eight years ago. She had also been, at just 24, the founder of Sassy, an offbeat, irreverent magazine for teenage girls. Ms. Pratt announced a couple of weeks ago that she would step down from Jane. At the time, she said, “It was just my own sense that it was a good time to move on.”

Jane, the magazine, is currently facing tough times. Its advertising pages are flat. Its newsstand circulation was up 15.6% for the first half of 2005, but that growth was achieved only after reducing its newsstand cover price from $3.50 to $1.99. Ms. Holley, 35, who has also worked at Time Out New York, has done well with ELLEgirl, which jumped 23.3% on the newsstand in the first half of 2005. The magazine has seen a surge in advertising (up 33% through September).

When Ms. Holley was appointed editor of ELLEgirl, her former boss at Time Out New York, Cyndi Stivers, who now works at Martha Stewart Omnimedia, assessed Ms. Holley’s unique ability to relate effectively to hip young women: “She had amazing insight into skate culture and street fashion … she can move between the grown-up world and East Village grunginess.” Ms. Holley was also a contributor to Jane in its early years. “Jane Pratt has always been an inspiration to me,” she said of her predecessor. “She changed women’s magazines forever, much the same way she changed teen magazines at Sassy.”

Ms. Holley will move to Jane on August 13. Ms. Pratt will stay with the magazine until September 30, guiding Ms. Holley, and will remain on the masthead as founding editor. She also intends to make periodic guest appearances in the pages of Jane.

Ms. Pratt’s other plans may include a radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio. She is also interested in developing a magazine for 40-something women, an idea she has had for several years. It would be called Elizabeth – which just happens to be Ms. Pratt’s middle name.

Currently, many fiercely competitive magazines are trying to appeal to women between 18 and 34, a prime demographic for advertisers. Besides ELLEgirl, those aimed directly at teenagers include Teen Vogue, CosmoGIRL, Teen People, and Seventeen. They battle each other, month after month, for advertising and newsstand sales like rival teen queens competing to be named the most popular girl in the class.

The best-known editor in this niche is Atoosa Rubenstein, who was the launch editor of CosmoGIRL and is now the editor of Seventeen. Ms. Rubenstein reportedly was one of several candidates considered for the job at Jane, although she has been very busy for the past five weeks with a television venture of her own. MTV has just finished filming “Miss Seventeen,” a reality show in which, yes, 17 teenage girls compete to win that title, intern for the magazine, and appear on its cover.

Although Ms. Rubenstein has the Donald Trump role in the series, she told Women’s Wear Daily, “My schtick is not about being mean.” She also has said she needed no media training before stepping before the cameras. Ms. Rubenstein, who preaches the importance of self-esteem to her readers, said, “I feel good about who I am. I don’t ever feel the need to feel self-conscious.” A self-confessed workaholic and micromanager, Ms. Rubenstein had the show’s dailies delivered to her apartment by 4 a.m. each day so that she could view – and, no doubt, edit – them before going to the gym and then the office.

Creating a magazine for a slightly older audience, women in their late 20s, can also be highly competitive and challenging. The longtime leaders in that field are Hearst’s Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast’s Glamour, along with beauty and fashion favorites like Allure and Marie Claire.

Other magazines attract young women who are more interested in health, diet, and staying buff than the sex and celebrity, fashion, and beauty formulas of the category leaders. These include Self, Shape, and Fitness – a couple of which have experienced their own abrupt staff changes in the last few weeks.

First, Shape’s California-based editor, Anne Russell, resigned after it was announced that Redbook’s Dimity Jones was joining the magazine as the New York-based creative director, and that the art and production staffs were being moved to American Media’s New York office. AMI’s editorial director, Bonnie Fuller, will now have a hand in writing the magazine’s cover lines. Shape’s new editor in chief will be based in New York as well and may report to Ms. Fuller.

Finally, this week Katherine Rizzuto, publisher of Fitness and previously publisher of Marie Claire, left her job. Ad pages in Fitness fell 12% through August. A spokesman for Meredith, Fitness’s new owner, declined to comment other than to confirm Ms. Rizzuto’s sudden departure.