Could Medium Change the Online Newspaper Industry for the Better?

Medium has an amazing opportunity to change the way we consume news, here’s why

Have you ever looked at what Spotify and Netflix were able to achieve in their respective industries? I used to work on the other side of the fence dealing with companies like this and was always fascinated on just how much they were able to change the world with their businesses.

I’m of the opinion that they did great things, for the most part. They upended the way people consume video and music, but more importantly to me, they made it massively cheaper.

I keep referring to them in some of my articles because I’m a firm believer that Netflix and Spotify are two examples of companies competing in the modern world the right way.

For 20 years or so, those industries refused to adopt to the modern internet age, and instead constantly fought their own customers — in the form of lawsuits against piracy.

I’m not an advocate for piracy, but I’m of the belief that piracy usually only flourishes when the existing marketplaces are very overpriced. If you’re curious on the subject, go search which developed countries still have high amounts of piracy per capita — it often coincides with very high prices of content consumption.

Why do I mention the above situation here? Because I haven’t seen (and maybe just haven’t heard of one yet in ignorance) a similar example in the news publishing industry.

I believe Medium has an opportunity to change that.

There needs to be a better method of news consumption

I’ve mentioned in my critique of the Medium platform on how there were other simple ways for Medium to setup their original business structure to make money. Mainly being as donations in the form of a non-profit, the modern online news pay walls, or advertisement based.

There’s countless others of course, but to me it seems that Medium took on a writer-as-a-customer model — unique but with its own problems certainly.

Partner publications

In July 2019, Medium started partnering with established publications and (somewhat questionably) prioritized their posts in the algorithms (as well as their own Medium publications).

This certainly caused a stir in the community, as it was seen to be against the little guy trying to get his flailing arms noticed in a sea of drowning writers.

It got me thinking though, isn’t there a further advancement to these partnerships? Medium certainly has a unique website for making money as a writer. Sure, it takes a lot of hard work, luck, and skill to make decent money on this platform.

But how many other websites exist today where you can go write a single post and make a few cents right away?

I wondered to myself, what would happen if Medium were to look at partnerships in reverse?

Incentives to join

I’ve strongly felt that the incentive to join the Medium Partner Program is quite lacking. If I’m just a pure reader and have no intention of creating content to make money on this platform, what do I get by joining? Unlimited views — that’s it.

Views that, if I had questionable ethics about pirated viewing (AKA the most people these days) then I have almost zero incentive to join up.

So what else could we add to that to make it more appealing?

Change what a Medium membership actually means

My initial answer to this would be to expand the reach of the membership program. What if Medium were able to partner up with top news publishers around the world (or at least the main countries Medium’s customers are in)?

The idea being that they partner up with them and start sharing the membership community. Myself as a Medium member could then go onto the Wall Street Journal, as an example, and never hit a paywall.

And then vice-versa for their members.

Multiply this slowly over time with more and more partnerships and you suddenly have a massive community of accessible news aggregation, all with money going into it.

On top of that, I’d hope that the ‘clapping’ system (or whatever version Medium comes up with after the current reading one) could also carry over to the partner news publications.

Imagine going on an article that you like on the Economist and really enjoying that post. Simply clapping and liking it (using your Medium identification) would then bring some sort of revenue both to that author and the Economist itself.

Benefits

I believe that this type of system, with well thought out variations and positive partnerships, could slowly start changing how we consume news in the online world. It would also massively benefit Medium, in my opinion.

They’d not only bring in access from other membership programs, new readership, and more views, but they’d also be able to add a great benefit to the Medium Partner Program.

Hell, they could even have different plans for what the user wants to be able to access.

I’ve been a big fan of how Spotify and Netflix upended their own industries and massively brought down costs for the consumer to consume.

I fail to see any reason (outside of plain old corporate greed) for why the news consumption industry can’t do the same.

‘Rant’ over.

As part of a meaningless personal challenge, I’m spending 7 days with my Captain Douchebag Product Manager hat on and am critiquing different parts of the Medium platform.

If you feel like being cynical, here’s the articles from Days 1–4:

Feel free to check out my other stuff on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading and have a great day/dia/dina/deň/روز/journée/день/天/jaj!