About The Next

Welcome to The Next: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff, dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.

Subscribe to make sure this vital work, creating a pipeline of young, diverse media professionals to write, edit and photograph the great game, continues and grows. Subscriptions include some exclusive content, but the reason for subscriptions is a simple one: making sure our writers and editors creating 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage get paid to do it.

And that is where your subscription dollars go: to our writers, editors and photographers.

Our team includes me, Editor-in-Chief Howard Megdal, Founder of The Next and The IX Newsletter. I have covered women’s basketball at countless outlets, including FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, SLAM, The Washington Post and many more.

I have made it my mission to both train the next generation to cover women’s sports with the same fierce urgency men’s sports receives, and to alter the pipeline for my industry to make women, particularly women of color, significantly larger part of our cohort.

Our masthead below, full of young writers you’ve come to know and trust as they’ve covered the WNBA, the NCAA, high school and international basketball, need your support to do this vital work, to tell these stories every single day.

Masthead

Editor-in-Chief: Howard Megdal

Managing Editor: Jenn Hatfield

Contributing Editors: Tee Baker, Penny Guevara, Natalie Heavren, Isabel Rodrigues, Alex Simon, Gigi Speer

Social Media Editor: Jackie Powell

Special Projects Editor: Kathleen Gier

Audience Editor: Jacob Mox

Strategic Consultant: Christie Gray

WNBA Beat Writers: Hunter Cruse (Atlanta Dream), Michelle Smith (Bay Area WNBA Team), Monique Newton (Chicago Sky), Jacqueline LeBlanc (Connecticut Sun), Arie Graham (Dallas Wings), Tony East (Indiana Fever), Matthew Walter (Las Vegas Aces), David Mendez-Yapkowitz (Los Angeles Sparks), Terry Horstman (Minnesota Lynx), Jackie Powell (New York Liberty), Jesse Morrison (Phoenix Mercury), Em Adler/Rowan Schaberg (Seattle Storm), Jenn Hatfield (Washington Mystics)

NCAA Beat Writers: Jenna Cuniowski/Mitchell Northam (ACC), Natalie Heavren (Atlantic 10), Tee Baker (BIG EAST), Eric Rynston-Lobel (Big Ten), Missy Heidrick (Big 12), David Mendez-Yapkowitz (Big West), Rob Knox (HBCUs), Jenn Hatfield (Ivy League), Angie Holmes (Missouri Valley), Scott Mammoser (Mountain West), Michelle Smith (Pac-12), Todd Goclowski (Patriot League), Gabriella Lewis (SEC), Caylen Johnson (Southern Conference), Matthew Walter (WCC)

National Columnists: Missy Heidrick (NCAA), Michelle Smith (NCAA/WNBA)

Team USA: Scott Mammoser

Contributing Writers: Aya Abdeen, Vishakha Deshpande, Dr. Abby Gordon, Allie Griffith, Kiri Oler, Emma Paidra, Cameron Ruby, Lucas Seehafer

Photographers: Domenic Allegra, Lydia Ely, John McClellan, Chris Poss

That is the work we do, every single day, at The Next, for you.

Come join us, experience the work across the writing, photography, podcasts and videos you’ve come to expect from our incredible stable of journalists. We’ll now be 100% reliant on your subscriptions to make the site work. But we don’t worry for a moment whether the audience is there. We see you. We know you are.

Come be part of what we’re building, and never wonder whether the place you get your women’s sports coverage is going to disappear, suddenly, ever again.