I Migrated My Publishing Property to Medium, and I am Not Freaked Out

Summary

The author of the article expresses a calm and supportive stance towards Medium's recent strategic shift, emphasizing that it has not negatively impacted their publication, The Bold Italic.

Abstract

In response to the media's alarm over Medium's layoffs and change in focus away from attracting publishers, the author, who has experienced both sides of layoffs in previous ventures, respects Medium's decision to not provide advance notice, considering the sensitivity around job losses. The author's publication, The Bold Italic, has not been adversely affected by Medium's announcement and continues to operate as usual. The author praises Medium for its user-friendly platform, which simplifies their editorial process and reduces operational costs. While acknowledging the importance of diversified revenue streams beyond Medium, the author also points out the general reliance of media on platforms like Google and Facebook for traffic. Despite the negative press surrounding Medium's changes, the author remains optimistic and committed to their partnership with Medium, recognizing the challenges in finding sustainable revenue models in the media industry.

Opinions

The author sympathizes with the difficult decisions Medium faced and respects their handling of the layoffs without prior notice to partners.
They appreciate the ease of use and cost savings provided by Medium's platform, which has positively impacted their editorial workflow and operations.
The author emphasizes that their publication was never fully dependent on Medium for revenue, having secured external deals and understanding the importance of not relying solely on one platform.
They challenge the notion that the situation is dire, stating that all media outlets are dependent on platforms like Google and Facebook, and thus, the risk of traffic fluctuations is inherent in the industry.
The author commends Medium for their transparency and the graciousness of their team during the transition.
They agree with Medium's CEO, Ev Williams, that the media industry needs to address the issue of insufficient payment for content creators and find more sustainable revenue models.
The author remains unfazed by the changes at Medium, viewing the situation as part of the business cycle and expressing willingness to continue their partnership with Medium.

I Migrated My Publishing Property to Medium, and I am Not Freaked Out

The media is freaking out today over Medium’s announcement that it laid off 50 people and that Medium is not focusing its efforts on attracting publishers anymore. Apparently Medium owed us some sort of advance notice as a courtesy, because we are valued partners.

I’ve started a few companies before and been at the giving end and receiving end of layoffs. They are no fun. Shifting product directions is also tough and often times no fun. I am here to say that I respect the Medium team’s decision not to keep us in the loop. We weren’t owed any sort of advance notice out of respect for the 50 people that lost their jobs yesterday. Even the risk that someone who is affected may find out is terrible, and inhumane.

Three publications reached out to me for comment on this story, and none of the three included my quote in their story, so here it is:

“This announcement has had zero effect on The Bold Italic and it’s business as usual here. I applaud the Medium team for doing the right thing for their business — I’ve been a CEO more than once and I know how hard these decisions are. As far as our day-to-day though, no change and excited to grow our partnership with Medium.”

Let’s dig into this a bit more — I’ll try to be as concise as possible:

We knew when we migrated over to Medium, revenue was one small part of the equation, but honestly, a HUGE part of the equation (which the media has not covered) is how easy it is to use their workflow to run our process. Because we are on Medium, our editorial process/workflow are much easier, we don’t have to pay AWS/Heroku bills, and we don’t have to deal with the basic ops of running our publication. So revenue was one part of the equation, but Medium also saved us a ton of cost from our legacy Ruby on Rails CMS, and continues to do that (and is much easier to use than Wordpress).

Most of our revenue comes from deals outside of Medium. We never totally relied on revenue for Medium to keep our publication up and running. That would be idiotic. And we will continue to operate that way. Medium never stopped us, and in fact encouraged us from the get go to continue to sell sponsored posts, email blasts, etc, as we would normally.

Don’t act like we aren’t all reliant on platforms. I don’t care which publication you are, you are reliant on either Google or Facebook for a majority of your traffic. We are all one algorithm change away from having our traffic tank. If a post when viral on Medium, that was just a bonus — we are still reliant on Google and Facebook to drive traffic like the rest of you.

Multiple team members from Medium connected with me yesterday and they were all gracious, polite, and thoughtful as they always are.

Ev was correct in his post — content creators aren’t paid well enough, and all this negative press still doesn’t get us closer to figuring out a long term, sustainable revenue model for media.

I know it’s really easy to write the negative story, but let’s not freak out over this. I commend the Medium team for taking a risk and trying something. I took that risk with them, and I’d do it again. I am not miffed. It’s business as usual for me, and I assume for the rest of the publishers on Medium. Some will leave Medium, some will stay, and life will go on once this news cycle passes.