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One of the interesting things around Vox’s wide sporting cuts to SB Nation last year (they blamed them on the COVID-19 pandemic, but that logic doesn’t really hold up) is the number of affected people who turned out to be found with prominent roles elsewhere in sports media. For example, Spencer Hall, Jason Kirk, Richard Johnson, and Alex Kirshner started a Moon Crew newsletter and Discord server and wrote a book, and Hall and Johnson found themselves as contributors to the ESPN / SEC network. Many other former SB Nation members have had some media success, whether with newsletters (Matte Brown, Scott hines, Mike prada, Ryan Van Bibber / Sarah Hardy / Christian D’Andrea, and Paul Flannerie are a few examples, but there are many more) or other media professions (including Brendan Porath at Golf Digest and Louis Bien at Player To Be Named Later Quarterly) or freelance (Matt Ellentuck and Nathalie Weiner in particular come to mind) or working with teams (including Kim mccauley). And the last person to add to that list is Alex McDaniel, who announced Monday night that she was joining USA today‘s For victory as the new managing editor:
nice to tell you that i join @For victory next month as the new editor of the site and I’m celebrating by watching hot rod as usual
– Alex McDaniel (@AlexMcDaniel) June 15, 2021
From this corner, McDaniel seems like a great fit for this role. She was one of those affected by the July 2020 round of layoffs at Vox / SB Nation, and had previously served as a college football writer and editor for SB Nation and their spin-off Banner Society. Since then she has been doing some interesting things, most notably as a video strategist for Live in the south, co-hosting Sports on the big screen: the sports film podcast, and regularly participates in the Old West Call of Cthulhu podcast Nobody killed (which, yes, please give us more content involving college football and role-playing media members). And her writing and SB Nation editing has shown her as an insightful sports voice and one of the people who helped make this corner of the college football internet truly special for a while. (And also, there are far too few women in key editing roles in sports media, so it’s nice to see that change a bit.)
None of this is to say that SB Nation’s cups have all worked well. These affected a ton of people, not all of whom were able to continue playing sports. And even those who found new things probably had to scramble after that decision, and that decision wasn’t made in a way that provided good exits for many. (And it’s worth noting that since then, SB Nation’s main news has been about appointing new leaders, not recruiting talented writers.) But McDaniel’s choice to lead FTW appears to be the latest indication of ‘a long line of those that SB Nation and parent company Vox had failed to realize for the incredible athletic talent they had in their sports teams, and that their shortsighted decision to downsize sports as a field of incomes “where short-term demand will be lower” has cost them many of the best. There are a lot of former SB Nation members now doing good things elsewhere, and that’s good for the internet as a whole, but not so good for Vox.
[Alex McDaniel on Twitter; FTW logo picture from PNGKey]
