Happy Basketball Wednesday, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. Happy Black History Month and Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day. But it is a sad day if you care about an informed populace.
Continue reading with a subscription to The IX
Get unlimited access to our exclusive coverage of a varitety of women’s sports, including our premium newsletter by subscribing today!
Already a member?
Login
Basketball Wednesday
It’s been a vitally important week in WNBA circles, and I’ll have plenty of fresh reporting about the state of CBA talks on this week’s podcast with Jackie Powell. You should go ahead and subscribe right now!
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast & Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis.
Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts and make sure to subscribe!
But we must talk about the decision by the Washington Post to shutter its sports section, and what it means for all of us, not just journalists.
My Sunday treat, when I was in high school in New Jersey, was to get a coffee from the supermarket that had a Sunday edition of the Washington Post, then read the Post, the Sunday New York Times and the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer cover-to-cover. No, I didn’t do this just to fit in.
I was a journalism nerd. I wanted more than anything else to be part of this world. The dream was to, one day, write for any of these publications, along with Sports Illustrated and, someday, books, too. (That I got to do so much of this is something I’m grateful for every single day.) I devoured not only the publications themselves but the autobiographies of key figures at these destinations. I read and re-read Personal History by Katherine Graham. I wanted to be best friends with Ben Bradlee. This quote from longtime Post writer Mary McGroary always stuck with me:
““I have always felt a little sorry for people who didn’t work for newspapers.”
None of us do this work to become fabulously wealthy. We do the work because keeping people informed about the things they care about is more fun than any other pastime I can imagine, because it is often important, and because it is central to the way American life must function if it is to remain America.
Few if any have done it better than the Washington Post. If you’re here, you probably care about sports as much as we do. And now, that institution is decimated, while the unworthy successor to Katherine Graham and her family chose destruction over absorbing a cost that amounts to a rounding error for him.
Here’s the thing. When the Washington Post leaned into brave, independent reporting and the work of earning and keeping the trust of its audience, profits soared. When they deviated from that mission, revenue tanked and instead of learning this lesson, Bezos and company leaned hard into the skid.
I tell our staff this all the time: we have earned the audience we count on today not because of any shortcuts or some special sauce, but for a simple reason: we show up, we are accountable, we are always in the service of delivering to our readers/listeners/viewers. Publications earn that trust every day, and can lose it in a single stroke.
It’s why when we took on investment last June from Ted Leonsis and Monumental Sports, it was so important — to him and to us — that editorial independence would not just be asserted as a shared goal, but explicitly written into the agreement. He and I didn’t just understand the ethical imperative of this, but the business case as well.
Our staff is overstuffed with journalists that understand that, too, who live to do this vital work. Until today, so was the Washington Post. Kareem Copeland and Ava Wallace are two colleagues I’ve shared many a press box with who did incredible work. Bailey Johnson and Spencer Nusbaum are a pair of alums of The IX Sports who have delivered best-in-class coverage of the Capitals and Nationals. As many others whose work I love and respect headed for the exits last year, I kept my subscription because everyone on that list and many more were must-read. Because they’d earned my trust.
It is easy to be fatalistic at a moment like this. The Post, no longer covering sports. The New York Times eliminated its sports department, and while I have many fantastic colleagues at The Athletic who now grace the print pages of the NYT, that they are all non-union workers who can be fired without a second thought to any grievance process is a feature, not a bug for the last national newspaper standing. Sports Illustrated, too, has gone through numerous, painful cuts to the reasons it was once the gold standard in sports magazine journalism.
And yet: a primary reason why so many of my colleagues are so angry today is because they know what I know: this work isn’t just vital. It’s profitable! These are not decisions made by journalists, and often made in ways that undermine the trust that is central to both the work itself and the willingness of people to pay for it.
These institutions disappear, and the easy answer is to decide that building journalism to scale is no longer possible, that the only independent work will be done by single writers who can afford to work as a freelancer with health insurance provided by either marriage or inherited wealth, operating without the protection of a well-funded corporate legal department. (You can be sure that’s one of the biggest goals of those who intend to operate free of the independent press.)
The reality is that there are success stories even in the journalism of the moment. The third newspaper in my Sunday morning high school routine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, just reached profitability for the first time in 20 years. It was not an accident. The Inquirer prioritized its relationship with readers over advertising and the support of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism ensured a high floor for institutional support that kept journalists employed and the trust of readers intact.
Talking Points Memo isn’t just a vital source for news here in 2026 — it’s been around for a quarter of a century. There are other, newer publications I both subscribe to and believe in — Defector, The 19th, Popular Information and countless others — but I picked the Inquirer and TPM because in both cases, outlets with totally divergent histories, audiences, even product deliveries, managed to navigate the choppiest waters in journalism history to maintain their core function: delivering trusted, verified information to those who want it.
One doesn’t need to be an idealist to see and understand that this core function of how any of us process the world around us is also a fundamentally sound way to run a business, provided that this core function is never compromised. In the coming weeks, I’m going to be sharing even more with you about how we intend to do that, not just for now, but in a sustainable way for decades to come.
Because women’s sports never got to enjoy that heyday of journalism. I’ve been watching the infrastructure of journalism I grew up worshipping burn to the ground even as the greater audiences for women’s sports would have resulted, in any other period of journalism history, in a corresponding explosion of coverage. But existing outlets who are receiving demands by ownership to cut costs to existing beats aren’t in a position to add new ones. And the women’s sports leagues themselves are going to need to figure out how to get the rocket fuel of day-to-day coverage which is responsible for every single American sport’s growth dating back over a century.
I’d like to have the luxury of spending today mourning the loss of a critical cornerstone of how we get information, a pillar of my childhood and a source of income for some of my most talented colleagues. But today is just the latest reminder: we have no time to lose to fix this.
Here’s what we won’t do: we will never prioritize anything ahead of our relationship with you. And here’s what I ask of you, whether you do this by becoming a paid subscriber here or if it’s somewhere else, the outlets you value the most: treat how you get your information the way you treat how you find food, or shelter, or any of the basic life necessities.
Because if a critical mass of us decide to consume information this way — and that is a big part of why so many journalists are so angry today, it doesn’t take a miracle, it doesn’t take 100% of the people, it is almost comically easy to build a profitable journalism outlet if you just take care to always guard the journalism first, and yet so many folks who have the capital to do it keep failing — we can build and keep these new institutions. And then no one can take it away from us.
Watch this space. More to come.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The Next. The Next’s editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
The IX Basketball, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom
The IX Basketball: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX Sports and powered by The Next. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.
Readers of The IX Sports now save 50% on their subscription to The IX Basketball, powered by The Next.
This week in women’s basketball
Kelly Wilson’s return to the WNBL at age 42, after the birth of child number two, is amazing.
Get to know Norfolk State’ Da’Brya Clark.
Love the Kim Barnes Arico origin story.
Pretty good, Unrivaled! Pretty, pretty good!
And here comes Athletes Unlimited!
Mel Greenberg is why so many of us are here.
Good list of VCU options from the great Mitchell Northam.
And just one of countless great Kareem Copeland stories.
Want more women’s hockey content? Subscribe to The Ice Garden!
In case you missed it, The Ice Garden is now part of The IX Sports family!
The staff of The Ice Garden has paved the way for women’s hockey coverage from the college ranks to international competitions. Of course, that includes in-depth coverage of the PWHL too.
Five at The IX: Kia Vaughn, Athletes Unlimited
| Mondays: Soccer |
| By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer |
| Tuesdays: Tennis |
| By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer |
| Wednesdays: Basketball |
| By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports |
| Thursdays: Golf |
| By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports |
| Fridays: Hockey |
| By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden |
| Saturdays: Gymnastics |
| By: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer |
