Why The New York Times Should Fear Medium
The New York Times should stop sweating BuzzFeed and start shitting bricks over Medium. BIG. FAT. BRICKS.
Recent earnings from the New York Times prove internet users continue to self-organize into distinct factions. Yes, y’all: please stop debating the future of media like it’s a binary path where either BuzzFeed or The New York Times wins the hearts and minds of every human on Earth. The real future will consist of unique outlets (and uniquely correlative business models) crafted for uber-intellectuals, part-time intellectuals, the masses, and the exclusively image/video/audio literate.
Although much commentary about Medium seems confused because the platform is still in rapid flux, one major item stands out: the content is intellectual. Thus, Medium is the type of content that will be read by someone who also reads intellectual news and magazines (like this!).
If we apply this to the media business, companies such as The New York Times should be shitting their pants for the following critical reasons:
- Medium’s content is high-quality, thoughtful, value-added, and entertaining;
- Medium is not burdened with an old-school cost structure for content creation;
- Medium is FREE and not annoying readers with all types of bullshit tricks to upsell into a paid model; and,
- Medium is not desperately experimenting (AKA: wasting money) on lots of “projects” which completely miss the main mark.
The New York Times is destined to either succeed in revamping their product and model to give intellectuals the media experience they want, OR fail by 1,000 paper cuts trying to iterate their old product and model into something attempting to appeal to too many factions. Hopefully they can stop over-thinking the future of media and start delivering the goods to their core users. If not, Medium will gladly keep building a new house…brick by engaging-to-read brick.
