After Vox Media cuts created 'huge crisis' at SB Nation, a new alliance is now further consolidating women's pro sports coverage

• Cuts at Vox Media nearly destroyed The Ice Garden, a pivotal source for women's hockey coverage.

• A partnership with outlets The IX and The Next pumped The Ice Garden with "literal lifeblood."

• Editor Mike Murphy and The IX and The Next's Howard Megdal told Insider about their "natural alliance."

Few outlets report on the world of women's professional hockey as consistently and scrupulously as The Ice Garden.

So when Vox Media axed funding for the former SB Nation website, alongside countless of its National Hockey League and Major League Soccer counterparts, it wasn't merely a "huge crisis" for site managing editor Mike Murphy and his staff; the move posed an existential threat to the growth of the sport itself.

"It was this grim reality of 'We're gonna lose this,'" Murphy told Insider. "I felt devastated for my creators and my writers, and I didn't know what to say and do.

"It was a day filled with honestly panic attacks and tears," he added.

But in the ensuing days, the "unbelievable embrace from this community we serve and love" came in response. They had raised $16,600 to keep the newsroom going, reinforcing that "more than enough people care" about their work and that it was worth preserving.

All Murphy had 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 The Next.

"I know you're going through a lot right now, but when you have a moment, give me a call," 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 are often going to be the people who care about women's basketball, women's tennis" and other women's sports — like hockey.

"It's been the basic fundamental premise of The IX," Megdal told Insider.

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

So the two entities drafted a partnership: The Ice Garden's stable of writers will produce the existing "Hockey Friday" section in The IX newsletter each week, "delivering a macro look at the world of women's hockey," Megdal explains. (The section's current writer, Eleni Demestihas, is departing to start her own women's hockey agency: Hecate Sports Group.)

"It's a natural alliance," Murphy said. "This is gonna help us in a big way — not just grow our platform, but honestly, speaking frankly, it's literal lifeblood pumped into covering all my staff's costs."

Megdal characterized the arrangement as "the type of paying gig that allows The Ice Garden to be put in a position financially to meet or exceed, right from the jump, what Vox was doing for them." And what Vox was doing for them, per Murphy, was a budget of "$850 a month to run an entire team of content."

The partnership will resemble the one forged between The IX, The Next, and Equalizer Soccer late last year — complete with a forthcoming mutual subscription agreement — and further consolidates women's pro sports news coverage.

"There are relatively few number of places where you can get [this coverage] consistently," Megdal explained. "... Making sure you have people boots on the ground, people who are covering this everyday matters.

"To me, this is a mission," he added. "Hockey is not my first sport or my second sport, but women's sports coverage is what gets me out of bed every day.

"And The Ice Garden matters in that cause like few other places."

Read the original article on Insider