MEDIUM PAYWALL PART 2 : LOVE IN THE TIME OF DISRUPTIVE MEDIA
Dear Ev Williams , Your Friends @ Medium , Medium Staff , Medium,
Once Upon A Time …
I lived in a strange, strange country. It was a country of broad sweeping lanscapes, open sky, beautiful sunshine and wild beauty. To travellers and its own citizens, it was brushed as a ‘golden’ country imbued with the promise of grandeur and driven by self-proclaimed religious purpose; in perpetua.
The myth was a soft sell and a desirable buy-in to anyone who loved the luxury of outdoor easy lifestyle. It catered to those eager to lap up sun sea and sand with economic offers of business enrichment that were seemingly impossible to refuse. The country enjoyed it golden era for several prosperous decades; for as long as the machinations of how it operated and was governed were secret enough to blinder even the most curious. As with most dictatorial constructs, it is not solely the issue of longevity but legacy too, that risks being the grand idealogue’s undoing. This land of golden opportunity achieved its notorious success on the back of insidiously dark secrets which held an entire nation captive, and under control of a handful of men, for over five decades. As the stitching of its repressive fabric became undone, further draconian laws throttled civil liberties and a decade of martial law contrived a surreal landscape, from which no one could escape.
One day, I woke to a world in which blank spaces were banned, a boy selling oranges could be gunned down in broad day light in front of his mother, herself shot at point blank range, in turn, and in which, dissidents held in police detention, officially survived their own autopsies . . .
Not least of the darkest secrets I was to discover, years later, was how the system worked: that the politically disenfranchised, by ruthless insidiously political connivance, paid for their own suppression, dislocation and physical ousting of their homes.
Propaganda is a brilliant divisive device. It eschews one thing to eliminate another. Corporate and political culture works with the same kind of principle; “us and them”. It also feeds into popular mythologies and creates the playing field in the public mindset in which lifestyle and business too, offer these rosy-to-golden scenarios of ‘opportunity’. More often than not these opportunities are presented in an opaque air of obfuscation.
It’s a bit like standing in a French field of wild corn and being told by an historian of the the historic world war battle that took place there and how in fact, as far as one can see, the landscape, in truth is a burial ground.
To some reading this, it might feel an exaggerated or overly wrought analogy and were it not for a lesson in yesterday’s discussion about the new Medium reader / founder membership paywall, I might have approached this differently. The lack of attentiveness is quite a revelation. It took EIGHT hours before someone left me a private note to let me know that a name, intentionally incorrectly attributed, was in fact incorrect.
I raise the point of inattention because it illustrates something of human behaviour when driven by emotional reaction, rather than considered thought.
All of us who have chosen to invest in Medium and showcase our artistry here; be it written or visual or in a variety of combinations, feel a visceral threat: not so much by a fee, but by the indistinct manner of its execution. No one likes feeling they are being led blindly into something they know so little about.
Many of us feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole, about to meet the Queen, whose only desire is beheading everything in her path, and fate feels something like the flying of cards: it’s perhaps all to play for, or nothing to play for at all.
For writers and many who took part in the ongoing online conversation and exchanges here on Literati Magazine, yesterday
the ongoing confusion about the new shift in Medium Membership arises from the lack of information about where we stand in respect of what might or might not be rolled out with this new ‘premium’ membership only-reader service.
In fairness to Medium, I did get a reply that seeks to answer an initial gamut of questions from Your Friends @ Medium :
They offered this as a reply and included a link to other links which answer some questions and address some concerns.
I am appreciative of their response and am grateful the links give an idea of what is on offer.
In reply to this posting from Medium, White Feather , very clearly expresses himself:
White Feather ‘s reply pointed me to the exchange he had with Aura Wilming and I point you to the visual of Ms Wilming’s new profile page to emphasise exactly what I mean by the extent of inattention.
Eagerly Ms Wilming describes the positive changes on the paywall profile page indicating that one can select interest tabs and that hers are fiction and stories.
Seemingly, just as no one spotted my incorrect name attribution yesterday for the entire day it was up, a jarring detail is not picked up by either of them in their exchange.
When you enlarge Ms Wilming’s image take a closer look at the stories under the tabs: in particular ‘fiction’ . . .
Now fictions are things we tell ourselves and others. Fiction is the broad canvas of the imagination and of centuries of storytellers whose tales have woven the vast intercontinental tapestries that constitute cultural identity and heritage, across the globe; from small isolated villages to sprawling urban cities and their mythologies. We live and breathe stories.
The fiction tab in this image proffers a visual example of the deeper disconnect that is at the heart of this whole Medium ‘reader paywall’ and the writer partnership offering.
How is an article clearly about actual road maintenance classifiable as ‘fiction’ ? The information offered, expounding the value added by a curated content offering here, in a single tab, seemingly, undermines itself.
The deeper dilemma I am experiencing as I write this, lies in the nature of the beast. Ev Williams makes it perfectly clear, his vision for the new paywall service offering Medium is Reader, NOT writer based. Writers serve a function here and to this end, membership fees, serve the same kind of self funding principle that serviced the political ideologues of my childhood.
It may be an unfair comparison at some level, but should for example, invited writers, once in the scheme, find themselves exposed to a ruthless competitive terrain in which compensation is leveraged with a differential income that can run into the thousands, I’d have to wonder at the nature of the investment, not least that made by those paying for the reader privilege. I know my writing this impression is speculative, however, I’d hedge it to be an educated assessment of the probability, considering statements refer to a future scale of incremental increase of fees: My own experience of aspects of media and the publishing industry also afforded its lessons.
Recognition is good for the the soul, yes. And it can have you grinning like a Cheshire cat. What does it mean though? How is one to discern its value? It’s natural for writers, especially, to clamour at the hope strung at the end of offers to earn; yet God or the devil lie in the details. It can be a matter of perspective, interpretation or simply down to the fact of a given matter.
This new development simply said, is not a realistic scenario for literary writers on Medium. The scope as far as I assess it, from everything given to explain the changes afoot, will be for a select number of writers to offer ‘value-added content aimed at subscription readership. The scope of this content is given in the Writer Partnership Package is confined to six streams of commercial/corporate interest. Among this listing is scope for personal development which is not literary in any shape for form.
Also, it becamse very evident and to be reaslistic, not everything written will be accessible;
It is surreal however to be able to recommend an article that is reader reserved …
Pressing the green heart above, felt a bit like trying to stroke a wild swan while it preens itself at an unreachable length of your shoreline. And I can’t help wondering the point of it.
And regarding talking points: Vanessa Praça-Correa, wrote me this earlier:
Hi Renée S
did you read this? if you did, what do you think? sorry if someone already asked, you already replied, or if you already said something about it — if so, please copy the link so I can read you, thanks.
“ Even better content: We will be routing 100% of the revenue from founding members (those who sign up in the first few months) to writers and independent publishers who have important work to do. Those who have hard-won expertise, do exhaustive research, and think deeply. Those who make us all smarter.” https://blog.medium.com/upgrade-your-medium-924b74c36552#.srid7gyf9
— — — — — — —
What I make of it ? The qualifications that abound in these and other explanations, indicate a roll out like hitting the ground running while securing the ground play by remote control. Not only does this play Russian roulette with the mind, there is also the lack of … in respect of international communities that I cannot ignore.
Giulia Blasi speaks bluntly and shoots her valid discontent straight from the hip.
It saddens me to see this. It truly does. Ignoring international voices at this point in time is a risk. Why, if Medium is so US -centric in its focus, does it offer itself as an ‘international platform’ ?
Moreover, I see the real bone of contention here, is not the paywall itself, but how in implementing it and creating an offer for a paid writer platform, this excludes the literary art that draws people to Medium in the first place.
Ev Williams and Medium executives took care of this in the months leading up to this new READER paywall by offering publications, ( those US-based publications, who met specific statistical criteria ) the chance to monetise their own membership. This takes care of those writers who write fiction and poetry to earn through the US publications Medium hosts on its platform instead. Foreign English publications, and I assume here, this goes for foreign language publications too, and those with smaller statistics have no means to monetise their writers on Medium, not for the foreseeable future anyway.
In terms of the bigger bigger picture for Medium, it smart as it is alienating. It leaves writers pretty much in the same place as if the membership paywall never existed but for the fact that access will change and there is no scope for literary writers within the scope of business interest on Medium at all.
Now that Medium has our attention and we of each other, this is the simple factual state of love in the time of disruptive media. Cake anyone?
My thanks to everyone for there support and participation in these conversations and my thanks and welcome to new followers.
SF Ali, alto, Jason Stelzner, Wild Flower, Tamyka Bell, Crooked Little Flower, Zelda Pinwheel, marika bianca, Nina Szarka, Sara Benincasa, Vince, Vanessa Praça-Correa, Jake Fuentes, Notorious DCI, Kate Lee, Shaunta Grimes, ePeak, BHD, Jake Fuentes, Varun Chopra, Zac Chapepa, Rachel Thompson, Molly Campbell, Sean Howard, Mirah Curzer, Eric Taubert, augustkhalilibrahim, Shahzeb Akhter, Sherry Kappel, Ré Harris, Rebecca Marie, Michael Ramsburg, Michael Benoist, Michael McQuarrie, Patrick Faller, Paul Brookes, Kevin Acott, Angiest In Seattle, Carl Safina, Nick McGuire, Sally O’Dowd, Brian Culley, Christopher Raley, C. Duhnne, Ben Freeland, K.E. Kimball, Richard Subber, walkerjo lee, Elizabeth Kiem, JONI BERGER, zeke woollett, Jackie Williams, Robert Cormack, Garnet, Menkeroth, A. Sethi, Tahlia Calvisi, Olivia Wolfe, Anna Breslin, Cristian Randieri, Phd, Alya, Stephen M. Tomic, Stefon Napier, blaine steele, David Moser, Michelle Monet, Little Fears, Teri Peters, Hevedar Yousif, Eric Taubert, Wendy Diamond, Allan Ishac, Immanuel R. Knight, Abbie, Amy Sterling Casil, Vito Pasquale, Giulia Blasi David Smooke, Michael Haupt Paul Dughi and everyone else… my Gratitude.
