My 3 Wishes For Medium After Reading Ev’s Voluntary Exit Post

Farewell, Siobhan, you’ll be missed, but we know you’ll kick butt no matter where you go from here.

First — Siobhan O'Connor, you will be missed. I wanted to start there. Thanks for the smiles you brought to this place for a while. We all know you’ll kick butt wherever you land next.

A note to readers who have no idea what I’m talking about..

If you clicked because of the title, but have no idea what this is about… Yesterday, Ev posted that Medium is changing direction and offering buyouts to editorial employees who want to leave. That news made The New York Times…

This post is instead of leaving an obnoxiously long comment on Ev’s post. I hate that. My theory is, if you have that much to say , write a post. So I did.

Four points that tell a story. Do you see it?

Nothing is ever one thing. You know? When you fall madly in love, it’s never one reason. It’s not his eyes or the way she laughs. Same when you fall out of love. It’s not just that “one thing” he does, or she does.

It’s always a whole bunch of things. But given enough time, you notice that it’s not a whole bunch of things, either. Not really. It’s just three or four things. And those three or four things play out in a multitude of ways.

So I’d like to pull out four points that paint a picture. After that, I have a couple of suggestions — wishes, really, I hope you’ll consider.

1. On the amplify program…

You said: One of our key innovations is what we now call Amplify, our program through which we offer editorial polish and a spotlight for writers who come in through the platform. This has worked really well.

Most people reading are probably wondering whaaa? What’s amplify? The “amplify” program is where Medium’s editorial team “find” a great story and reach out to the author to “amplify” the story via Medium publications.

I’m glad it worked for Medium. Problem is, I don’t imagine your editors scoured other publications to find content, which means the only writers who get “amplified” are writers who didn’t publish to a publication.

Though the program no doubt helped some writers, it didn’t seem to do much to help the growth of in-house publications… per the next point.

2. On Medium Publications…

You said: The bet was that we could develop these brands, and they would develop loyal audiences that would grow the overall Medium subscriber base. What’s happened, though, is the Medium subscriber base has continued to grow, while our publication’s audiences haven’t.

I am not surprised that Medium’s inhouse publications launched strong and then dwindled while Medium as a whole continued to grow. I suspect you’ve drawn a wrong conclusion, though. Again, per the next point…

3. On Publications as a whole…

You said: I think a significant factor is that the role of publications — in the world, not just on Medium — has decreased in the modern era. (…) Trust is more important than ever and well-established editorial brands still have meaning. But today, credibility and affinity are primarily built by people — individual voices — rather than brands.

First, yes — trust is built by people, not brands. Facebook didn’t lose my trust, Mark Zuckerberg did. I did leave a comment on this…

Here’s what I didn’t say in that comment. Just because in-house publications did not continue to grow parallel to the growth of Medium as a whole doesn’t mean the role of “all” publications has decreased.

It only means the role of your publications decreased.

Publications, as a whole, are not decreasing. They are growing. Have you seen how many big pubs are splitting into smaller topical publications? The Startup already has two splinter pubs. Curious already has 36K followers.

The role of publications “has to” grow because the only other alternative is for writers to publish in the wild. To no publication. And if they don’t have an audience of their own, why would they do that?

So why didn’t your niche publications grow? You answered that already. As you point out — readers care about writers.

Your words, and you’re right. Readers, as you point out, care more about the writers they like. I will read my favorite writers no matter where they write. So you’re right. Readers care about the writers they want to read.

Know who cares about publications? Writers.

Writers want a good home for their writing. A place they feel welcome. They want a publication that will treat them with respect. Even if that means rejecting them politely and telling them to please try again.

I wonder if you have any idea how frustrating it is to spend hours (days!) on a post in hopes of getting into a publication — and then get no reply. Not even a polite refusal. Just no reply at all. It’s disheartening.

I wonder if you know how often that happened at in-house publications? It was a common topic in the FB groups.

Medium continued to grow. External publications continue to grow. But at the same time, in-house publications dwindled. I think you lost the writers. That’s who cares most about publications. And writers are readers, too.

4. On independent voices…

You said: For the foreseeable future, we will focus that talent on supporting independent voices on our platform. This means identifying writers — both already on Medium and not — and offering them deals, support, editing, and feedback to help them tell great stories and find their audience.

I wonder if you know how that reads to the writers who know they will never be offered a deal, support, editing or feedback.

Hand picking writers isn’t new and it’s not just here. Salon did it long before Medium. Substack has stirred some ire for offering “deals” to hand-picked writers. Newsbreak prohibits writers from discussing compensation because everyone doesn’t get paid the same. It’s not new or surprising.

Every business has every right to operate in the way they see fit, of course, but for the majority, it feels exclusionary. Just putting that out there.

My 3 wishes for Medium…

All that said, Medium is still one of the best places for writers. Hand-down.

Barack Obama posts updates here. Celebrities post here. Some of my favorite writers even post here. And when Bezos wanted to tell the world he was being blackmailed, he came to Medium to do it.

When a writer posts here, they still have some shot at visibility. It’s not like posting on some Wordpress site no one visits.

The opportunity to get eyes on one’s writing is the strength of Medium and always will be. Community is a close second. Many of us have made friends and business contacts here.

But still. The number of writers who make over $100/month is a single digit percentage. I don’t need to tell anyone $100 doesn’t go very far. How many writers make a living wage? A miniscule number, I’m sure.

Even if you handpick writers to “support and offer deals to,” there are still things you could do to boost results for the rest of the masses of writers that show up with words on their fingers and hope in their hearts.

I hope you’ll consider some of them.

1. Remove dates from posts?

Have you noticed the grumblings about “old” posts on the homepage? Often, people don’t click to read posts because of the date. They see a post from December, 2020 and think it’s “old news.” Three months ago. lol.

They holler “hey Medium, why is there old content on my homepage?”

I’ve seen those. It makes me wonder — if you removed dates from posts and comments, would there be a surge in engagement and views? Seems to me most of the content here is evergreen anyway.

Maybe some people would hate that, I don’t know. I’m sure your job must feel like herding cats.

But it seems to me the feminist posts I wrote last year are still relevant. Not like gender bias has died. lol. It could be that without dates, old posts might perform better. I don’t know. If I could remove them from my posts, I would. Food for thought?

2. I really wish you’d terminate outright plagiarists

I’m not talking about lazy writers who didn’t re-write a sentence or two from Wikipedia. Or even mosaic plagiarists who cobble together entire articles from paragraphs copy & pasted from 6 different posts. Whatever.

I’m not here to argue morality or get on a high horse. But I do know there are people who are posting outright plagiarism of entire articles. A small handful of writers write about it incessantly.

If you remove plagiarists from the pay pool, everyone else will do a bit better. More butter to spread around, if that makes sense?

3. I wish earnings were easier to see at a glance…

I sell graphics at another site. When I log into my stats there, I can see a cumulative total for each item. Sortable by week/month/year/all time. It’s kind of cool. There’s a list of titles, with clicks, views, sales.

Here, if I want to see what an article has paid me, I have to go into article stats. Do you know how daunting that is with hundreds of stories?

Discovering that an article I wrote last year paid well is great. Like finding money in an old coat pocket. But if writers could see cumulative titles easily, it would incentivize us to up our game. Strive to beat their last total.

Even just a column with a cumulative total in stats would be amazing. Easier said than done, I’m sure. But wow, that’d be great.

That’s about it. Also? Thank you.

For me, Medium is a place to write because I can’t “not” write. When push comes to shove, this is your business and your labor of love. But some of us have been here a long time and we have some “feels” in the game.

I know opinions are like butts. We all have them, no two are the same, and it’s not fun when other people stick them in your face without an invitation. This piece is just my opinion. No more, no less.

Regardless how the changes shake out, I just want to say thank you.

This place is a whole lot more civil than some of the other sites for writers. I appreciate that. So thanks for building a place where we’re not afraid to say what we think. Because trust me, that’s not the status quo out there.

:)