Broad Street Hockey needs your help

Jan 24, 2023 - 2:30 PM

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You’re probably aware, but in case you are not, Vox Media/SB Nation announced last Friday that it would be shutting down just about their entire NHL network at the end of February, including us here at Broad Street Hockey. The news came as a surprise to us, despite worsening conditions for us working here at the blog over the last year or so.

Pressure came from above for us — and the rest of our friends at the other NHL blogs — to focus on clickbait, to forget about quality and focus on quantity and clicks. Nothing was more important than ensuring that the company made as much ad revenue as possible. And, in a vacuum, Vox Media wanting to maximize the money made from our site and all the others makes perfect sense. In a vacuum, we want clicks too! We want to be THE place for Flyers fans to come for insight, analysis, and fun. But we want to do that with quality, as we always have. That has been hard to do over the course of the last several years, as we’ve been asked to do more with less.

For reference, most of our writers here at BSH are paid $100 per month for 2 articles per week. That’s $12.50 per article. And we are one of the lucky sites; as a larger market with all of you incredible readers, we were given one of the larger budgets in the NHL network to work with. Some of our colleagues at other sites wrote for $50 a month. Some weren’t paid at all. The point here, the reason I’m telling you all this, is because it’s important to understand that none of us are here for money. We’re here because we love doing this, we love this stupid team, and mostly we love all of you and what we’ve created here, together.

Which is why we are determined to keep this community alive.

What will that look like? I don’t know. I don’t know where we will go, what it will be called, or when we will get there. But we are going to get there. I know this because we have incredibly smart, accomplished, well-connected people in the SB Nation NHL family (like Taylor Baird over at Defending Big D and our own inimitable Steph Driver) who I’m confident will find us a new home where we can continue to bring you the best in fan-driven Flyers content.

This is where you come in. If you have some time, we’d appreciate it if you could take this short survey to tell us a little bit about who you are. Knowing who makes up our community will allow us to know what we need to be going forward and how we can ensure that we are bringing you what you want as we transition into the future of Broad Street Hockey.

We’re not going to go quietly, friends. So stick with us.