Lee Feinswog and Ed Chan: 'And that's how we became publishing magnates'

Lee Feinswog and Ed Chan: 'And that's how we became publishing magnates'

It took a matter of weeks for Lee Feinswog to rebound from being laid off. Not a month had gone by from the moment he received a call from the higher-ups at Turner, for whom he freelanced to write college volleyball stories on NCAA.com, when he began scrolling through his phone, idea and contact in hand.

His passion for writing about the sport came as a surprise, even to him. Here was a guy who had covered LSU basketball in the Shaq days, who had written about the highest levels of the NBA, MLB, who ran in circles with some of the best writers in the country – and he was smitten by college volleyball. It’s possible that it was the novelty of it, at the time. He had watched his first men’s match only a year before, a semifinal of the NCAA Championship where, as fate would have it, he sat next to Hugh McCutcheon, then the head coach of the women’s national team and one of the most brilliant minds in the game.

“I learned more that day than you could possibly imagine,” Feinswog said on SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. A few days later, he found himself in Anaheim, watching the women’s team practice at the invitation of McCutcheon.

But Turner, which owned NCAA.com, was bleeding money, and the first to go were the freelancers, including Feinswog. McCutcheon, though, wasn’t the only contact Feinswog had made at that semifinal. He had also exchanged contact information with the editor at Volleyball Magazine, Aubrey Everett.

“All of a sudden, I was like, ‘Wait, I sat next to the editor of Volleyball Magazine,’” Feinswog recalled. “I sent her a note and said ‘I’m a free agent, can you use me?’

“You guys have never seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but it’s kinda like where he goes, ‘Well, considering I’m desperate and you’re exactly what I need…’ so I picked up with the magazine and wrote for them for four, five six years as a freelance writer.”

Despite holding what was basically a monopoly over volleyball coverage, the magazine wasn’t immune to the downsizing of the journalism industry as a whole. The print edition was shrinking, circulation was down, the website was limited.

Simply put: It wasn’t going to last long.

Feinswog knew this, as did Ed Chan, who had subscribed to the magazine for more than 40 years and had been one of its most reliable freelance photographers. They agreed that, when the magazine hit a certain threshold of pain, it would be willing to sell.

They’d be the ones to buy it.

“It got to that point,” Chan said. “So I asked if they were interested in selling, and they said yes.”

It was the simplest of business negotiations, almost to comical levels. Feinswog was driving down I-10 in Houston. Chan called and said “We can buy volleyball magazine, you want to buy it?”

“Ok, sure.”

“That was it,” Feinswog said, laughing. “That was our business negotiation. And that’s how we became publishing magnates.”

He says this jokingly, but on a relative scale, Volleyball Magazine – since renamed VolleyballMag.com in Feinswog’s and Chan’s ownership of the publication – is without a doubt the most reliable and regular source of news coverage on all things volleyball, be it beach, indoors or otherwise.

Their goal was to become the daily digital news source of volleyball, which is exactly what has happened. They cover college women. They cover college men. They cover the pros, to the point that Feinswog watched every single match during the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Not just every American match.

Every match.

“And then I was like, ‘Wait, now college is about to start?’” he said.

They have covered the AVP and the NVL and the World Series of Beach Volleyball and p1440 and CBVA and every other iteration of professional volleyball there has been on the beach. They have covered the college game.

And while competitor sites such as Volleymob and FloVolley have either shrunk or folded, VolleyballMag has grown and expanded at an impressive, if not staggering, clip. The number of stories that are read through organic Google searches has exploded by 800 percent in the four years they’ve owned it. They’ve hired freelancers to cover whatever the two of them cannot, expanding to juniors and even to Brazil. It was Feinswog who named the very podcast on which he told this story.

Yes, SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter was as much Feinswog’s creation as it was Bourne’s and Mewhirter’s.

Now a new chapter of VolleyballMag.com begins, as the magazine – “magazine” used loosely here, since there is no longer a print edition – has been acquired by p1440, equipping them with the resources they’ve long needed but haven’t possessed.

“It’s amazing really,” Chan said. “It’s kind of like making the transformation from being a garage band to getting a recording contract. We had all these ideas. We wanted to expand to juniors. We wanted to expand to Brazil. Normally we would be ‘OK, how are we going to pay for this? Who are we going to get to buy into this? How are we going to promote it?’ With p1440, if they see it as a viable idea, they greenlight it and we go with it.”

“There is a vision,” Feinswog added. “There is an expectation of greatness on a tremendous scale. All I can tell you is you’re going to see more amazing things not just on VolleyballMag.com but from p1440.”

Jaksot(500)

John Mayer, Billy Allen: Navigating the Complexities of Coaching College Volleyball

John Mayer, Billy Allen: Navigating the Complexities of Coaching College Volleyball

This episode of SANDCAST features John Mayer and Billy Allen, hosts of the Coach Your Brains Out podcast as well as coaches in NCAA Beach Volleyball. Mayer is the head coach at LMU, leading the Lions to six straight WCC titles and a berth in the National Championship. Allen is an assistant at Stanford, helping the Cardinal to a single season wins record and an MPSF Championship. With the NCAA season over, they chat about: - How to navigate the art of playing time vs. winning at all costs (hint: nobody knows) - Billy Allen's recent entertaining run through AVP Huntington Beach with Taylor Crabb - John Mayer reflecting on the most successful season to date with LMU - Travis Mewhirter's first season at Florida State and what he learned SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

14 Touko 1h 23min

TCU Makes History; AVP League Comes Down to The Wire; April's New Coaching Role

TCU Makes History; AVP League Comes Down to The Wire; April's New Coaching Role

Welcome back to another solo episode of SANDCAST, where Travis Mewhirter breaks down all the happenings in the world of beach volleyball. This week, Mewhirter chats: - TCU's historic NCAA Championship win in Gulf Shores, the first in program history and a long time coming - This week's AVP tournament in Huntington Beach, which will decide the final two spots per gender in the 2025 AVP League - Volleyball World's proposed rules changes, including, yes, no doubles. Yikes - April Ross' new role with USA Volleyball, and why it's her dream job SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

7 Touko 31min

NCAA Championship Preview: Can The East FINALLY Beat The West? | SANDCAST U

NCAA Championship Preview: Can The East FINALLY Beat The West? | SANDCAST U

Welcome back to SANDCAST U, where Madison Fitzpatrick breaks down all things NCAA Beach Volleyball. This is an AWESOME edition, where Madison is literally on the sand of Gulf Shores, shooting our preview episode of this weekend's NCAA Championships. She chats about: - Is this finally the time TCU takes home the first non-West Coast title in NCAA history? - Why she thinks Stanford is the hottest team in the country at just the right time - Will UCLA alas get back on top after watching rival USC win four straight? - Can USC manage to make it an absurd FIVE STRAIGHT NCAA Championships?! That, and more. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

1 Touko 6min

NCAA Champs Are Here! AVP League Coming Down to the Wire; The Beach Pro Lucky Loser Tour

NCAA Champs Are Here! AVP League Coming Down to the Wire; The Beach Pro Lucky Loser Tour

Welcome back to another solo episode of SANDCAST, where Travis Mewhirter recaps a wild weekend, and previews a hectic one to come, with the NCAA Championships descending upon Gulf Shores again. Meanwhile, the AVP League had two more tickets punched, and the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour is hereby renamed the Lucky Loser Tour.  Mewhirter chats about: - How Kristen Nuss simply wills gold medals into existence sometimes - James Shaw and Chaim Schalk demolishing folks to clinch their AVP League bid - The wild run of Lexy Denaburg and Julia Scoles into the AVP League - How the new Elite16 format can be changed for the better instead of being the Lucky Loser Tour And, per usual, more SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

30 Huhti 35min

NCAA Beach Playoff Preview: Will Postseason Follow Craziest Regular Season Ever? SANDCAST U

NCAA Beach Playoff Preview: Will Postseason Follow Craziest Regular Season Ever? SANDCAST U

Welcome back to SANDCAST U, where Madison Fitzpatrick talks all things NCAA Beach Volleyball. In this episode, she chats about the end of the regular season, which she thinks is the wildest NCAA Beach Volleyball regular season she's ever seen. She chats about the regular season, and previews the upcoming: - MPSF Conference Tournament, which includes Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, and more - Why Florida State, Texas and LSU are in an absolute brawl in the CCSA, where the 'Noles traditionally reign supreme - How LMU can -- and is expected to -- continue dominating the WCC SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

24 Huhti 10min

Silila Tucker: The Man Linking The Beach Volleyball Community Nationwide

Silila Tucker: The Man Linking The Beach Volleyball Community Nationwide

This episode of SANDCAST features Silila Tucker, a longtime professional on the AVP Tour who chats with Tri Bourne about the development of yet another new beach volleyball league called the Community Circuit, and it's one you can certainly get behind. Fun development from Lila announced on this one, as well as chats about: - How the 15-15-15 style of the AVP League matches changes things - How to develop mental toughness in beach volleyball - Why Lila is obsessed with golf as a tool for mental toughness training - What makes Phil Dalhausser a legend of the game, beyond his obvious accolades SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, sandcastpod-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

23 Huhti 1h 2min

Recapping A Wild Weekend In Beach Volleyball: AVP Qualifiers, Saquarema Successes, NCAA Beach

Recapping A Wild Weekend In Beach Volleyball: AVP Qualifiers, Saquarema Successes, NCAA Beach

Welcome back to another SOLO EPISODE of SANDCAST, where Travis Mewhirter provides a comprehensive overview of a wild weekend in the world of beach volleyball, breaking down the AVP League qualifier, the Saquarema Elite16, and the Cal Poly Center of Effort Challenge. Namely, he chats: - The surprise success of Corinne Quiggle and Megan Rice - The more surprising success of Hagen Smith and Logan Webber - The puzzling decision of the AVP not to give Kelly Cheng an injury sub for Sara Hughes, so she'll have to qualify via qualifiers - Anders Mol and Christian Sorum returning to the Beach Pro Tour in style And a bit more! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCASTVB. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

16 Huhti 30min

James Shaw and Molly Shaw: Living The American Volleyball Dream

James Shaw and Molly Shaw: Living The American Volleyball Dream

This episode of SANDCAST features James Shaw and Molly Shaw, the newest power couple in the world of beach volleyball, who just descended upon the Quintana Roo Elite16 and both came away with semifinal finishes. James and his new partner, Chaim Schalk, walked away with bronze, while Molly and her new partner, Kelly Cheng, took fourth in Molly's first Elite16. With Tri Bourne hosting, they chat about: - How each partnership came to be - Why James opted to play one final indoor season in Germany before returning full-time to the beach - How Molly handled the nerves of both playing with a World Champion in Cheng and also her first Elite16 (hint: well) - What it's like being a married couple traveling the beach volleyball world And so much more.  SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCASTVB. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products!  We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link.  If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

9 Huhti 1h 15min

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