A Bad Look for Medium Publications

I already explained why I will never submit my stories to Medium publications, but I am not against changing my mind in case new relevant data shows up.

This is a principle I apply in all life aspects.

Therefore, I sometimes check a publication or two to see if the feel of it all changed and if there is some new aspect of the experience that could make me change my opinion.

So far, nothing popped up in the positive sense but I discovered a new worrying trend in several publications.

It’s something that I believe speaks volumes about the quality of the selection process, the so-called editorial skills of the publication’s gatekeepers, and in general, about Medium’s direction for the following years.

Here’s what I discovered:

When you visit a publication’s main page and see the latest stories, there’s a nauseating level of repetition of names.

Same author, two or three accepted stories in the last two days.

Then you scroll, and there’s another batch — one author, multiple articles.

What the hell do these “editors” ultimately curate?

For some publications, it looks like all one needs to do to get accepted is to hit “Submit”.

What are the chances, if a publication’s standards would hit average levels, for the same author — out of hundreds, likely — to have a bunch of stuff published on the same day or on consecutive days?

I mean, space them out a little.

How greedy are you? It’s not an All-You-Can-Publish event.

I think it dilutes the quality.

Sets of latest posts only hitting 50 claps on average — which is indicative of reads level, when publications are supposed to be a Medium writer’s way to stardom?

And I’m not even talking about small publications. No, the big ones practice this thing — “Do we want all of this? — Yup! Have we read it? — Uhm, scanned it. Is it any good? — Who cares? Let the readers tell us.”

I am not linking to any publication and I am not giving examples because I do not want to harm the writers.

It’s not their fault.

This is the editors’ bad work ethic and… sorry to say it… Medium’s. They allow this to happen.

I think it hurts writers in the long run — not just that they’re only making a fraction of the money they could be receiving for their work, but the new content creators may shape the way they think about their skills in the field based on the results they get from these online environments.

And that’s fake data that they’re getting.

It’s exploitation even. Publications get tons of free content but do not treat writers with respect.

I’m still out.

Thank you for reading.

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This article was originally published on an external platform on May 19, 2022.