The Rebooting Show: Stat wants to be the Politico of health

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For episode 3 of The Rebooting Show’s mini-season focused on modern B2B media, I spoke to Angus Macaulay, COO of Stat, the health-focused site that’s one of my favorite niche media brands. Please send me an email with any feedback. Also, please rate and review the podcast. Thanks to Niceguyappreviewer, who said The Rebooting Show is “such a valuable podcast for media entrepreneurs,” noting the “insightful, actionable and relevant information.” Thank you, Niceguyappreviewer.

Politico’s model has long been an aspiration of many niche media companies, even before Axel Springer shelled out $1 billion to buy it. The reason: Politico was able to pull off the “prosumer” model of providing in-depth, insider coverage of a niche (politics) that straddled the line of consumer impact but with the advantages of a B2B business model that typically affords an opportunity for high-priced subscriptions.

Stat, born out of the Boston Globe Media in 2015, wants to pull off the Politico model for life sciences. The site, which operates independently and has 70 people, had a breakout moment during the pandemic as the world’s attention by necessity turned to the issues that are squarely in Stat’s wheelhouse. Stat’s monthly traffic peaked at 23 million in March 2020 vs 4.7 million the prior month. The site’s revenue was up 40% in 2021 vs 2020, with subscription revenue up 24%.

“Before Covid, when we’d talk to people at conferences or to advertisers, it was either we know Stat and love it or I never heard of it,” said Angus Macaulay, Stat’s COO. “We were still a new brand. There was still an awareness brand. When Covid exploded, people in the healthcare industry were also trying to keep up on all the breakthroughs, and many in the ecosystem relied on us as a source. Our awareness in the healthcare ecosystem went through the roof.”

Here are five key takeaways from the conversation:

Find a local story with global impact

The idea for Stat came out of a dinner Boston Globe Media owner John Henry had with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who noted that while Boston didn’t have the tech scene that Silicon Valley has “you have the life sciences and the entire infrastructure with the academia in Boston as well.” While the Globe is mostly a local news company, the opportunity was to build a niche publication with global impact from the position of Boston’s outsized role in life sciences as home to over 1,000 biotech companies. “If you lived in Boston and Cambridge over the last 25 years, you can’t miss how life sciences has changed this area, it’s just exploded,” said Macaulay.

Use “stars” to establish credibility

Many news sites focus on keeping costs low, particularly early on. That often means hiring less experienced journalists who command lower salaries. With the backing of a larger media company, Stat was able to take a different path. Its founding executive editor was Rick Berke, a 27-year veteran of The New York Times, sending a signal of the ambitions Stat had, Macaulay said. “They didn’t find someone working at a niche B2B trade site. They wanted someone who understood high-end investigative journalism.” The site went on to hire several well-known reporters with deep experience in their fields, including