Stat launches a $299/year subscription with original content, events, and a private Slack group

At Zuora, we work with leading publishing companies from all over the world. Contrary to the “newspapers are dying” meme, we are in fact, witnessing a revival. In order to compete with other media outlets, newspapers such as The Boston Globe, The Guardian, etc have switched focus from the advertiser to the subscriber and are customizing their content and subscription offers as well as expanding their focus from news to building communities.

Ricardo Bilton reports on Stat Plus in Nieman Lab:

Stat, The Boston Globe’s health and medicine site, has spent the better part of its first year intensely focused on audience and editorial growth. What started as a site centered on the activity in Boston’s biotech and pharmaceutical hubs has become a news operation with a broader reach, including national coverage and a more global readership. Just eight percent of its audience is in Massachusetts, and 25 percent comes from outside the United States.

With Stat Plus, Stat is trying to better focus on some of the readers it already has. Running for $299 per year (or $29 per month), the subscription service is designed to appeal to policymakers, service providers, and workers in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries looking for deeper insights into some of Stat’s core coverage areas.

Beyond exclusive editorial content, Stat Plus will also offer subscribers a chance to connect with each other and industry figures. Taking a page from the likes of The Information and Quartz, Stat plans to create a Slack group for its Stat Plus members, who will be able to sit in on Q&A sessions between Slack writers and industry sources. The idea reflects the interest among new subscription services to create a significant sense of community with readers, rather than a transactional, access-based relationship.

Read the full article on Nieman Lab.

And check out how Zuora helps The Guardian win subscribers!

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