Minnesota Wild news website Hockey Wilderness will soon cease operations amid a cull by Vox Media, which the New York Times reports has laid off 7% of its workforce.
Thomas P. Williams, the managing editor of Hockey Wilderness, confirmed that the website and its staff are among those affected by the Vox cuts.
“I poured a whole damn lot into that site and saw it grow a tremendous amount over the 2.5 years I was in charge of it,” said Williams in a tweet. “I have wrote 1,360 blogs for that damn website and I couldn’t be more proud of what it has become.”
Williams said Vox is shutting down “a whole lot of NHL sites,” which like Hockey Wilderness are part of the SB Nation network under the Vox Media umbrella. SB Nation has been around since 2005.
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The message on the Hockey Wilderness Twitter account reads: “Hi everyone, we received news this morning that Hockey Wilderness is one of the communities affected by this. As of right now, we don’t have a lot of information other than coverage will continue until Feb. 28. We will keep you all updated.”
Jim Bankoff, VOX CEO, issued this statement to the New York Times.
“Unfortunately, in this economic climate, we’re not able to sustain projects and areas of the business that have not performed as anticipated, are less core to where we see the biggest opportunities in the coming years, or where we don’t have enough rationale to support ongoing investment in what could be a prolonged downturn. In spite of the dedication of the many talented people involved in these initiates, we need to scale back.”
