Good evening, friends.
I’ve just completed an exhilarating Sunday, covering a women’s baseball combine for college players run by the great Justine Siegal and Baseball For All.
So it feels like the appropriate time to share with all of you the upcoming moving plans for The IX and The Next.
Over the past year-plus, it’s become apparent that the vision of a women’s sports newsletter across what is now six women’s sports, and a 24/7/365 newsroom focused on women’s basketball, were not just necessary parts of the media landscape. They are dynamic parts of a community that includes all of you, and there is a hunger for it that makes our future economically sustainable.
So as we’ve gotten deeper into 2021, I’ve had the task of determining how we continue to grow. I adore the work of the five writers who share space with me at The IX — Annie Peterson, Joey Dillon, Sarah Kellam, Erica L. Ayala and Jessica Taylor Price — and endlessly impressed by my incredible team at The Next, from Managing Editor Jenn Hatfield, to my editors Bailey Johnson and Penny Guevara, social media maven and Liberty writer extraordinaire Jackie Powell, and the young pipeline of hungry, innovative writers who bring the women’s basketball beats to life every day in your inbox.
Ultimately, after too many meetings and endless discussions with my incredible edit team, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is the right time for a move. So the next email you’ll receive after this one should look very different, sometime Monday night. There may be some bumps along the way, but we’ve worked to make this as seamless as possible, and as I wrote to you last week, your billing preferences will remain the same.
Many new options and goodies, however, await all of you, especially those who are paid subscribers. To say I’m excited about what’s ahead would be a massive understatement.
Most of all, I want to thank all of you in our communities here at The IX and The Next. As many of you know, I have dedicated myself to changing the way women’s sports are covered, to attempt to fix what so many of us understand is dramatic, unnecessary inequality, with damaging consequences and divergent economic outcomes based on that uneven distribution.
You have all, by being here, reiterated my belief that simply changing this by changing it — by showing up, providing those of us who want it with the in-depth coverage women’s sports deserve — we can alter the landscape all together.
Thank you for your support so far. And I cannot wait to join you on the other side of this migration for what’s next.
Best,
Howard Megdal
Editor/Founder, The IX and The Next