BuddyPress.org

@myqolik and @lautering – I believe my plugin does what you need. You mention wanting to enable people to read the content without joining the group – If you use my plugin then this is possible. When you set the group to Announcement-only, then ONLY admins and moderators can add content. The group can be public, private or even hidden. And for a public group, it doesn’t matter if the members join or don’t join, they still can’t add any content. So it really doesn’t matter if they join or don’t they still can’t write a thing. The benefit of joining the announcement group is that with email notifications plugin, you can turn that group into a email newsletter.

Does that match what you are looking for?