It happened on Medium: April 2025
Draft Day stats, Medium stories from new writers, and nuance beyond the headlines
Last month, 350 people joined Draft Day 2025 in the live Zoom event, dug through their drafts folder on Medium, found a dusty draft, polished it up, and pressed publish on that story. Some did that more than once! Medium writers who participated in Draft Day published over 500 drafts altogether. We were joined by the editors of 24 publications who coached, encouraged, polished, and otherwise helped writers get their drafts over that publish finish line.
The energy on Draft Day was electric, despite the fact that most of the event took place in a quiet Zoom Room where we were just heads-down, working on our writing. Every so often, someone would announce a draft had been sent off to its readers, and we’d all cheer that writer on, akin to someone crossing the finish line after a long, hard race.
Those 350 Draft Day participants got something done that many people only ever dream of: they overcame their fears, got over procrastination, and shared their story with the world.
Together, we wrote about lessons from 42 years of running, experiencing temples and shrines in the forest of Nikko, the beauty in caregiving, the joy of solving math problems to get WiFi passwords, and, naturally, what makes one become a writer among many, many other topics. (Thank you to , , , , and respectively!)
Outside the event, we weren’t alone. Almost 30,000 people published their first story on Medium in April. Close to 100,000 writers overall published one or more stories on Medium last month.
And if you’re feeling that itch? You’ve got the seed of an idea, but something’s holding you back? Head on over to story.new and start typing. Everyone’s got a story to tell, and only you can tell yours.
—
By the numbers
In a snapshot, here’s what readers, writers, and editors did on Medium in April 2025:
- 9+ million: How many times Medium readers clicked on their Daily or Weekly digest
- 53k: How many stories were submitted to Medium publications
- 10,000+: How many readers clapped for the ten most popular stories on Medium
Dispatches from the people who were there
We all read the news, but some people live the news. They either experience an event first-hand that the rest of us only hear about, or they have a personal or professional window into it that the rest of us don’t have.
Some of those folks come to Medium to share their perspective on what’s going on. Want a deeper insight into a few of those headlines? Read on.
- What Pope Francis was really like, from one-time staffer
- Tens of millions of people lost power in Spain and Portugal on April 28th. was there when it happened
- Lawyer talks about the need to investigate the possible insider trading that occurred just before President Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement
Older gems that resurfaced this month
Beyond headlines and news stories, there are some stories that our readers come back to months or years after they were first shared on Medium, because the wisdom or perspectives they hold are still valuable.
Here are a few of the most-read stories this month that aren’t new.
- In January 2025, professional editor shared the five phrases that tell her you used ChatGPT in your writing
- In February 2020, infosec specialists Kristen Kozinski and Neena Kapur walked through how to remove your personal info online
- In March 2022, veteran, author, and mental health specialist addressed why Russia invaded Ukraine
First-time writers
In honor of Draft Day, we want to share some meaningful stories from Medium writers who published their inaugural Medium story in April. Here’s to many more!
- AI DevOps researcher wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek take: “The “S” in MCP Stands for Security”
- Medium writer shared an interesting take on their negotiations with a teacher’s union
- explained how “strategic curiosity” is the skill you should have if you want to be an effective leader
- Former binge-drinker broke down, from a scientific perspective, why your brain feels so awful after you quit drinking. (Short answer: because it’s healing.)
- Congressional candidate shared what the first month of running for office in Illinois’ Ninth District has been like
- Freelance software engineer and consultant wrote about how he broke the world record for proving a three-century-old math conjecture
Hits off Medium
While Medium is a home for readers to come and discover stories on the web and on the app, many of our stories find their audience when readers discover and share them on Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, email, or elsewhere.
Here are some of the most externally popular stories published on Medium this month.
- Animator and Synthographer examines brainrot through the lens of AI-generated Italian Brainrot Animals (found and shared on Instagram, Google)
- Professional gambler and licensed attorney breaks down a $352k gambling dispute between Caesars and suburban Chicago man Thomas McPeek (found and shared on Google, email, DMs)
- Wizards of the Coast game designer provided a detailed breakdown of how she fixed White, the least-loved card color for Magic: the Gathering (found and shared on Reddit, email, DMs)
- , Software Dev/Data Analyst, wrote a searing defense of From, which he believes is the most brilliant sci-fi ever written (found and shared on Reddit)
- Writer wrote a 44-minute NSFW story set in the JayHoon alternate universe, which is based on the relationship between two members of South Korean boy band ENHYPHEN (found and shared on X)
- Coder wrote a story about polymorphism in the programming language Rust (found and shared on Reddit, this-week-in-rust.org)
Medium product updates
In April, we made two publicly-facing improvements to Medium.
- Follow and subscribe to a writer in one click: It’s now easier to get email notifications about stories from writers you follow, and for writers to grow their audience. Previously, the options to follow and get notified about a writer’s new stories were available separately, but now you can easily do both in one spot. Read more about it here.
- Responses to unlisted stories are now public: We’ve fixed how responses work on unlisted stories. Instead of being unlisted like the story itself, now new responses will be visible to everyone reading the unlisted story. Writers will also get notifications when anyone responds. Many writers and readers let us know about this bug, so we’re thrilled to ship a fix.
For more great stories from Medium’s writers and publications, check out our Staff Picks. To learn something new from Medium writers every weekday, subscribe to the Medium Newsletter.
