The New Blueshirt Banter

My name is Joe Fortunato, I am the Managing Editor of Blueshirt Banter, a hockey blog that has covered the New York Rangers since 2009.

On Friday, January 20, we were informed that our site would no longer be "managed and monetized" by our parent company Vox Media. This means that our contributors will no longer be paid going forward. Paid contributors will receive their last monthly stipend for February 2023, and beyond that we are on our own.

We intend to move the site (even if we can't keep the name) and the community that we have spent so much time building and nurturing to a new home. With your support, we can host that new home in a place that will allow us to continue to serve you all the Rangers analysis that you know and love, while also bringing you guys the community commenting abilities that has made this such a special place for over a decade. For full disclosure: We do intend that site to be cost-associated to help fund the site's writers once we launch.

These funds will help facilitate those endeavors, and will also go to ensuring we can financially take care of the writers who are impacted by this as we make the move to a new home.

Monthly stipends at SB Nation were never a proper reflection of the talent and effort of our contributors and going forward we now have an opportunity to build a system that is better for everyone involved.

It will take time, but we are happy to have a passionate support system of readers and commenters who are active participants in game threads and we want to make sure that we have a new place for them to come to.

Thank you so much for reading, spreading the word, and giving what you can if you can.

(If you're curious, the above picture was a joke article Mike had written years ago where he made a picture book of myself, him, and Tony (the site's top comment-maker) going through site business. It's you all loving that type of silly that makes us love you guys.)