This week we're unveiling a beautiful new Scope blog. Not only am I celebrating but I'm also thinking back to Scope's birth, nearly nine years ago.
In many ways, in the media landscape anyway, 2009 feels like the "olden days." Back then, Twitter was still in its infancy, Instagram and Snapchat didn't exist, and blogging was yet to become a household word. So when my colleagues and I decided that year to create a blog for Stanford Medicine, the decision was met with some raised eyebrows. As the busy news office for a top medical school, we already had a magazine and a newspaper, and we sent out scores of press releases each year - what, some wondered, did we need a blog for?
The answer was that through a blog we could share a greater variety of stories and reach a larger audience than ever before, and in real time. And so after we went live - becoming (to our knowledge) the first academic medical center to publish a blog - we hit the accelerator and never really stopped, writing and publishing about 1,000 Scope articles each year and watching our readership climb.
We've featured some pretty great content on Scope: stories that gave readers hope, made people cry or both; articles that aimed to inspire, awe, or provoke thought; and first-person pieces that were honest, brave, and important to share.
One of my proudest moments came when I learned that a reader received a much-needed medical diagnosis because of Scope; she came across a description of one of our patient-writer's mysterious symptoms, which matched her own, and from there learned she had the same condition.
And today I'm proud for a different reason: After more than a year's worth of work, our redesign is complete. It was a huge project, but it was worth it to be able to offer you a fresh, more modern-looking Scope - and hopefully an easier way to read and find our content. (We look prettier on your phone or tablet, too!)
Please take time to browse around and enjoy. And here's to the next nine years!
Image by stux
