It's Jordan—We Really Need Your Help (Please Read Full Email)
A website glitch has caused us a serious problem—you taking these quick steps can really help us
Hey folks, it’s Jordan.
I’m going to try and make this as simple and not complicated as possible. But first a brief explanation.
In the early days of Status Coup, we began encouraging viewers to support us as paying members through our own website (for tech people, we used Wordpress and the member press plug in). Fortunately, many of you signed up, helping us fund a ton of ON-THE-GROUND reporting across the country.
Unfortunately, as is the case in a truly bootstraps independent outlet, we had several quirks with that site—including at one point being hacked while I was reporting in Flint on the verge of breaking a major story. When that happened, hundreds of paying members payments stopped (fortunately those members payment information was not affected). As a result, we created a NEW MEMBER site that was more secure and, fortunately, we haven’t had any issues with it since.
As of a week ago, we still had about 350 paying members signed up—with their payments going through monthly or annually—through our original members site. A las, under the never a dull moment nature of independent media, we had a random glitch where nearly 200 of those paying members’ payments were cancelled (and unfortunately we can not manually re start them).
***To be clear, those members financial data is secure and was not at all compromised***
As I hope you can understand, this is a MAJOR BLINKING RED LIGHTS problem for us. We have been viewer funded PRIMARILY THOUGH PAYING MEMBERS. We don’t have any major investors or plutocratic donors. So losing nearly 200 monthly paying members is a major hit that means…
Having to significantly scale back on-the-ground reporting
Scaling back the use of freelance hosts, journalists, and commentators
Having to make other cuts
If you are a paying member and don’t know if you signed up through our original website (2018-2021) or newer site (2021-present)—and thus don’t know if you are one of the folks whose payments were cancelled—no worries!
There is an EASY FIX if you can take 2-3 minutes after reading this:
Step 1: Check your email to see if you received an email from us with subject line Jordan Here...Status Coup NEEDS You! sent on Tuesday, April 9th.
Step 2: If you don’t see it, make sure to check your spam, or CLICK HERE for a web version of the email.
Step 3: If you received it, just follow the easy steps to SIGN UP AS A PAYING MEMBER through our newer member website.
Like I said above, since establishing our new members site in 2021, we’ve had no issues at all with member payments. Therefore, I would sincerely appreciate if all the members who received the email about their payments being cancelled re-signed up through our new website.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this, feel free to email us at info@statuscoup.com or me personally at JordanChariton@statuscoup.com.
Jordan