My Take on Medium’s Newest Changes

With the caveat that I could be totally wrong

Photo by 𝓴𝓘𝓡𝓚 𝕝𝔸𝕀 on Unsplash

First let me say, I’ve read everything I could find about Medium’s new focus and I can’t say I fully understand what’s happening. I can’t even say I understand any of it. But what I think I’m seeing is a need by Medium to up the quality of its stable of writers, even while feeling forced to promote quantity.

It’s a double-edged sword. As the number of Medium writers grows, their business grows. They couldn’t do this without the hundreds of thousands of writers joining their ranks, and they know it, but they’re bending themselves into pretzels trying to figure out how to keep those numbers growing without always having to accept the mediocre, thus making them look for all the world like a content mill.

Big names, including former president Barack Obama, sometimes use Medium as a platform. Magazines like The Atlantic and The Economist keep a spot here — and you know they wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t a huge audience for them.

Sometimes their Medium articles go viral and readers new to Medium come over here to read those pieces. Some of them no doubt hang around to see what else is here. Imagine their dismay when they read titles like, “I Made a Gazillion Dollars on Medium Last Month!” or “How I Cured My Athlete’s Foot”. Imagine how…