NewsBreak Announces Its First-Ever Awards and There’s Something Strange About Some of the Nominees
Some of NewsBreak’s biggest contributors go quiet
NewsBreak this week announced its first-ever NewsBreak Headliner Awards, and something is interesting about some of the nominees.
The awards, scheduled for Jan. 25, feature five nominees in six categories:
- Top Article Contributor
- Top Video Contributor
- NewsBreak Buzzmaker
- Local Champion (Writer)
- Local Champion (Video)
- Community All-Star
So, what’s notable about some of the nominees? Many of them haven’t published anything on NewsBreak for weeks and, in some cases, months.
Top contributors who’ve gone silent
NewsBreak describes the Top Article Contributor category as recognizing “the contributor with the most articles published in 2021.”
Looking at the five nominees, though, only one has published an article so far in 2022. Here’s each Top Article Contributor nominee and the date they last posted anything on NewsBreak:
- Amy Christie, Dec. 12, 2021
- Just Go, Sep. 30, 2021
- David Heitz, Jan. 12, 2022
- Matt Lilywhite, Dec. 21, 2021
- Riley Blue, Nov. 26, 2021
Reviewing these contributors’ NewsBreak profiles, it’s clear they were productive on the platform for most of 2021. But some haven’t posted anything new in weeks.
It’s a similar story in the NewsBreak Buzzmaker category, which “recognizes the contributor with the most commented and shared stories of 2021.” Here’s this category’s nominees and most recent NewsBreak publish date:
- Jano le Roux, Nov. 11, 2021
- Toni Karaza, Jan. 10, 2022
- Ash Jurberg, Jan. 16, 2022
- Amy Christie, Dec. 12, 2021
- Matt Lilywhite, Dec. 21, 2021
Recent contributor activity picks up across the remaining categories, though.
All five nominees in the Top Video Contributor, Local Champion (Writer), and Local Champion (Video) categories have published on NewsBreak within the past few days. The same goes for four of the five nominees in the Community All-Star category.
The Buzzmaker and Top Article Contributor categories feature eight unique nominees. (Matt Lilywhite and Amy Christie repeat across both categories.)
Of these eight, five haven’t published so far in 2022. Why?
Where have NewsBreak’s most prolific contributors gone?
In Nov., NewsBreak announced significant changes to its Contributor Program.
Those changes resulted in a new content policy, updated contributor content requirements, and revised editorial standards and guidelines. NewsBreak made it clear with these updates that they wanted contributors to produce original, high-quality journalistic content.
Maybe some of the nominated contributors who haven’t published on the platform in weeks didn’t want to follow NewsBreak’s changes.
Or, perhaps NewsBreak banned them from publishing more content for violating its policies. (But if that’s the case, it’s odd that the company is still including these former contributors in their awards program.)
One writer who’s gone quiet on NewsBreak that is particularly noteworthy is Matt Lilywhite.
The curious case of Matt Lilywhite
After amassing more than 29,000 Medium followers, Lilywhite announced he was leaving Medium. The writer listed NewsBreak as one of the areas he would focus on going forward.
“Some of you already know I have a following of over 45,000 people on NewsBreak,” Lilywhite wrote. “And if you didn’t previously know about my journalistic endeavors, now you do.”
And, for a time, Lilywhite was a prodigious NewsBreak contributor. He published multiple articles a week about the weather and climate, growing his NewsBreak following to more than 64,000.
But Lilywhite’s last NewsBreak article came out on Dec. 21. That same day, Lilywhite published his first Medium story since Oct., titled “Why I’m Coming Back to Medium.”
Lilywhite doesn’t explain in his Medium article why he’s returning to the platform, only saying he made a mistake in leaving Medium.
“In my article explaining why I was leaving Medium, I said I was following my gut,” Lilywhite wrote. “But in doing so, I forgot a crucial fact of life: your gut can sometimes give you diarrhea.”
Why did Lilywhite decide to come back to Medium?
Maybe Lilywhite wasn’t earning enough money on NewsBreak to justify his time there. Perhaps he grew tired of writing about the weather or of needing to publish new content every couple of days. Or, maybe he needed the flexibility to be more creative than what NewsBreak’s guidelines allow.
Many of us have left Medium at some point, only to return. Even I.
What tomorrow brings for NewsBreak and its contributors
For now, Lilywhite is back to publishing content on Medium and, at least for the past few weeks, hasn’t posted anything new on NewsBreak.
And Lilywhite is one of five nominees in two of NewsBreak’s Headliner Awards categories who haven’t published on the platform in weeks.
Does this absence of some of NewsBreak’s most prolific contributors from last year denote the platform is losing steam? Perhaps these writers didn’t want to realign to NewsBreak’s new guidelines and policies?
Or, maybe for some contributors, it’s simply a case of timing. The holidays just finished, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues plaguing the U.S. and much of the world.
Right now, we’re left with more questions than answers, but I’ll let you know if I learn more.
And I’ll continue following NewsBreak for updates to its Contributor Program. You can be sure not to miss anything new about NewsBreak by subscribing to receive my Medium stories by email.
Also, if you’re interested in attending the 2021 NewsBreak Headliner Awards on Jan. 25, you can register here.
Why do you think some of NewsBreak’s top contributors have gone quiet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.