WRITERS WORTH FOLLOWING
Meet 10 Of Medium’s Top Journalists
These pros write great stories that can inspire you to raise your game — but they don’t brag about it
Are you having trouble finding good stories to read on Medium? Would you like to see more posts by the best writers on the platform and fewer by people boasting of their awesome earnings or trying to sell you something?
I have two words for you: Follow journalists.
Naturally, I have a few biases here. I’ve worked for two daily newspapers and freelanced for many majors, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
And don’t we all think our own kind are the best? Sure we do.
But journalists typically differ from other writers in ways that can inspire you to raise your game. Three of them are:
- They learned how to write from pros, not from an algorithm. Leading journalists usually have been staff or freelance writers for widely admired publications. Many have also written acclaimed books. They’ve had editors who taught them to write to a consistently high standard.
- They tell you something new in every story. “New” means you get something you didn’t know (or a fresh view of what you think you do know) every time. It sounds obvious, but if you’ve been on Medium for a while, you know how amazingly un-obvious it is.
- They have strict codes of ethics. They value fairness and accuracy above all. They don’t plagiarize, libel people, violate copyrights, or make undisclosed use of ChatGPT. Their grail is: Journalists shouldn’t just be above conflicts of interest but above the appearance of conflicts of interest. That means their stories don’t flaunt their earnings or top-writer status or amount to little more than sales pitches for their courses.
Who am I to judge other journalists?
Yes, there’s some subjectivity involved here. I’m sure I’ve missed some great journalists. But I’ve spent years buying writers’ work for mainstream media, taught journalism at two universities, and served as a judge for one of the country’s three major book prizes, the National Book Critics Circle Awards.
And you don’t have to take my word for it that you can learn from stellar journalists. I’ve listed below (in random order) 10 of Medium’s best writers and their gold-plated credentials, and I’ve linked to a sample story by each so you can judge for yourself.
1 Liza Donnelly / Liza Donnelly
Gold-plated credentials: Visual journalism trailblazer, longtime cartoonist for The New Yorker, and author of Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists (Prometheus, 2022). Words in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. TED and SWSX speaker.
Sample story: Live Drawing the 95th Oscars
2 Donald G. McNeil Jr. / Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Gold-plated credentials: Former New York Times science and public health writer. Part of a team that won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize. Winner of the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, given to a reporter with “courage, character, and integrity for cumulative professional accomplishments.” Author of Zika: The Emerging Epidemic (Norton, 2016).
Sample story: We Are Already Blowing Our Monkey Pox Response
3. Vanessa Gallman / Vanessa Gallman
Gold-plated credentials: Former editorial page editor of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and member and chair of Pulitzer Prize juries. Also a former national correspondent for Knight-Ridder newspapers, local government editor for the Washington Post, and president of the Association of Opinion Journalists. Editor of Who Am I? Memoirs of a Transformative Black Studies Program (BookBaby, 2022).
Sample story: New Anti-Abortion Target: Drug Stores
4. Clive Thompson / Clive Thompson
Gold-plated credentials: Contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and columnist for Wired and Smithsonian. Former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Author, most recently, of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (Penguin, 2019).
Sample story: The Rise and Fall of the Dot-Com Foosball Table
5. Geneva Overholser / Geneva Overholser
Gold-plated credentials: Editor of the Des Moines Register when the paper won the Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service for a series on an Iowa woman who was raped. Former member of the New York Times editorial board, ombudsman for the Washington Post, member of the Pulitzer Prize board, and director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. Co-editor of The Press: Institutions of American Democracy (Oxford, 2005).
Sample Story: What in the World Does the Times Mean by ‘Independence?!’
6. Cory Doctorow / Cory Doctorow
Gold-plated credentials: Blogger, science fiction novelist, and former co-editor of Boing Boing. Author, most recently, of Chokepoint Capitalism (Beacon, 2022). Winner of more than a dozen awards, including an Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award.
Sample story: Learning From Silicon Valley Bank’s Apologists
7. Elisa Gabbert / Elisa Gabbert
Gold-plated credential: Former poetry editor of the New York Times Book Review. Seldom posts on Medium but writes some of its best book reviews when she does. Words in the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books. Author of Normal Distance (Soft Skull, 2022) and other books.
Sample story: Every Book I Read in 2022, With Commentary
8. Jeff Jarvis / Jeff Jarvis
Gold-plated credentials: Professor at CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism, where he helped start programs in Entrepreneurial and Engagement Journalism. Co-host of This Week in Google on twit.tv. Founded Entertainment Weekly. Author of What Would Google Do? Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World (HarperBusiness, 2011) and other books.
Sample story: We, the Tweeters
9 Sheila Moeschen / Sheila Moeschen
Gold-plated credentials: Writer, photographer, and author of the League of Extraordinarily Funny Women: 50 Trailblazers of Comedy (Running Press, 2019) and the forthcoming Boston Road Trips (Globe Pequot, 2024). Words in Huffington Post and other media.
Sample story: The Revolution Will Be Unusual: Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”
10 Markham Heid / Mark Heid
Gold-plated credentials: Longtime contributor to Time magazine. Former reporter for Men’s Health. Words in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, and other media. Reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Sample story: I Asked Leading Covid Scientists — Off the Record — About the Virus’s Origins and Lab Leak Theory
And honorable mention to:
Anton Protsiuk / Anton Protsiuk
Gold-plated credentials: Contributing editor at the Kyiv Independent and a writer on media, technology, and politics for Ukrainian and European markets. Senior editor at the Fix on E&P (formerly Editor & Publisher) and an editor at Ukrainian Wikipedia.
Sample story: Living in Kyiv Amidst Power Blackouts
Jan Harayda is an award-winning critic and journalist who has been vice president for awards of the National Book Critics Circle. She is a former book editor of Ohio’s largest newspaper whose work has appeared in major print and online media including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Salon. On Medium she writes the Pop Culture Shorts column that appears every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on FanFare and has quick takes on books, TV, movies, and more.
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