The Medium pivot is the message

At the end of the day, everyone writing on the internet is still in the business of attracting eyeballs. Subscriptions make this relationship a little more diffuse, but they end up in the same place: what generates money is what draws attention. And individuals, unbound by institutional restraints and implicitly rewarded for sensationalism, are at ... See more

Meanwhile, publications, still burdened with relics of a bygone era, like copy desks, fact checkers, human resource departments, and health care plans, find themselves locked in a losing battle against a nimbler opponent, one with none of the checks and balances that gum up the production of hot takes.

How do you get the attention you need? Medium tried top-notch writing, but that failed. Now, like Substack, Patreon, and others, rather than get in the ring itself, the publishing platform has opted to take a back seat, delegating the process of content production to people with pre-baked audiences and quietly taking their cut.

All throughout the media world, individual writers are finding that they can use social platforms for distribution, crank out writing coated in their signature style, and make far more money than they were able to when stuck behind the desk of a woebegone publisher.

Outside of a fundamental restructuring of the internet (here’s looking at you, Web 3.0!), the next best solution for journalists and writers of all stripes is to band together, insist on a more equitable distribution of resources, and begin wielding the considerable agency at our disposal for our own good, rather than that of the men behind the cur... See more