After Vox Media Cuts Create ‘Major Crisis’ At SB Nation, New Alliance Now Consolidates Additional Coverage Of Women’s Professional Sports Coverage

• Cuts at Vox Media almost destroyed The ice gardena central source for women's hockey coverage.

• A collaboration with outlets The IX and Next pumped the ice garden with “literally lifeblood”.

• Editor Mike Murphy and The IX and The Next's Howard Megdal told Insider of their “natural alliance.”

Few outlets report on the world of professional women's hockey as consistently and thoroughly as they do The ice garden.

So when Vox Media defunded the former SB Nation website, along with countless of its National Hockey League and Major League Soccer counterparts, it wasn't just a “major crisis” for the site's editor-in-chief Mike Murphy and his staff; the move posed an existential threat to the growth of the sport itself.

“It was this stark reality of ‘We're going to lose this,'” Murphy told Insider. “I felt devastated for my creators and my writers, and I didn't know what to say and what to do.

“It was a day filled with frankly panic attacks and tears,” he added.

But in the days that followed, the “incredible embrace of this community we serve and love” came in response. They had raised $16,600 to keep the editorial going, reinforcing that “more than enough people care” about their work and that it was worth preserving.

All Murphy needed to figure out was how.

Enter Howard Megdal, the founder and editor of two of the most influential women's sports media entities — The IX and Next.

“I know you're going through a lot right now, but when you have a moment, call me,” Megdal recalls telling Murphy. “I want to talk to you about why this is an opportunity.”

Megdal already had “a proven audience of people who care about women's sports.” And he knows “that the people who care about women's soccer will often be the people who care about women's basketball, women's tennis” and other women's sports — like hockey.

“That's been the basic premise of The IX,” Megdal told Insider.

So he was prepared “to help [Murphy] make The Ice Garden sustainable and wanted whatever role I could play to be part of that solution.”

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So the two entities worked out a partnership: Ice Gardens' writing stable will produce the existing “Hockey Friday” section of The IX newsletter each week, “which provides a macro view of the world of women's hockey,” Megdal explains. (The section's current writer, Eleni Demestihas, is leaving to start her own women's hockey agency: Hecate Sports Group.)

“It's a natural alliance,” Murphy said. “This is going to help us in a big way — not only growing our platform, but frankly, honestly, it's literally the lifeblood of covering all of my staff's expenses.”

Megdal characterized the arrangement as “the kind of paying gig that allows The Ice Garden to financially match or surpass, right off the bat, what Vox did for them.” And what Vox did for them, according to Murphy, was a budget of “$850 a month to run a whole team of content.”

The partnership will be similar to that created between The IX, Next, and Equalizer Soccer late last year – complete with an upcoming mutual subscription deal – further consolidating coverage of women's professional sports.

“There are relatively few places you can go [this coverage] consistent,” explained Megdal. “… Make sure you have people boots on the ground, people who cover this everyday issues.

“For me, this is a mission,” he added. “Hockey isn't my first sport or my second sport, but covering women's sports is what gets me out of bed every day.

“And the Isträdgården plays a role in that matter like few other places.”

Read the original article at Insider