About the Publication

Medium founder Ev Williams has just announced that Medium is laying off 50 staff members and closing its New York and Washington, D.C. offices. I am staying on Medium, and this decision helps to encourage or reinforce the choice I’ve made.

Before you read any further, you should know that while I have helped over 180 businesses in the U.S., Canada and Mexico get off the ground successfully and/or expand and grow, primarily women and minority-owned businesses in emerging sectors like sustainable agriculture, food, manufacturing/goods and healthy lifestyles/CAM/natural or alternative health —

I haven’t been able to do the business development successfully for at least two years. I worked as hard as I ever have to get Chameleon Publishing off the ground. I have been asked, is that still operating? Yes, it is, but at a much slower pace.

The model that will be used for this publication is: creator-owned. This is also known as a for-profit co-op or employee-owned publication. I am the Treasurer of Book View Cafe, which is the oldest, largest and most stable and successful author publishing cooperative.

If you want to be a part of this publication and be a part of what I understand Ev Williams to say Medium Staff wants to accomplish, we are going to look at revenue streams that I understand and have worked with that we can put into effect for staff-owners. This isn’t closed, this isn’t “beta” and it isn’t a special opportunity for you to get into a lucrative business ghostwriting “branded content” for Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical (just picked his name out of the back of my head). If your goal in life is to be a reality TV star, pollster or online pundit and giver-of-TED-talks then ..

I don’t get those revenue streams. I’ve been too busy working.

Here are some revenue streams I *do* understand:

1.e-book publication and sales
2. membership and/or subscriptions
3. print book publication and sales
4. sales of services to others: research, documentation, and analysis (but not ‘lets’ support the fracking project’ type)
5. sales of subsidiary rights such as library and translation and/or film/media

I have said for approximately 3 years that just about 100% of people worldwide can read — and yet only 20% of the population regularly buys and reads books. Many recent studies show that among the much larger percentage of the population that “consumes” online content, 70% only read headlines.

It seems impossible to communicate the most-logical and likely reasons for these behaviors —but I will once again share the reasons that individuals who don’t regularly buy and read books, or who do only read headlines, have told me — as follows:

“I don’t see books on topics that interest me”
“Books are boring”
“I know the article won’t be what the headline says”
“The articles just say the same thing over and over”
“It’s not relevant”

Now, I stopped following a few writers on Medium myself as I could not bear yet another listicle that repeated something someone else already said better years ago. That’s just me. The major problem is that anybody who does “editorial” using the methods known since Gutenberg’s day seem to be unable to get outside the mental box that what interests or motivates them is the same as everybody else and if it isn’t exactly what they think is right then no-go, obviously no one else would be interested.

Are you a fact-checker?

One of the first focuses of this publication is going to be actual fact-checking. This is an obvious need and something that is frustrating the members of the 20% who do regularly read. Others don’t care for a reason that might surprise many — they know what my grandparents told me:

‘don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper.’

Because it was bulls**t in their day and it’s bulls**t now.

Any actual fact checking has to be done by experts and experienced professionals (i.e. people who can tell that a screen shot from a video game isn’t “evidence of Russian hacking” — or people like me who worked in nonprofit administration and have worked with law-abiding, above-board businesses internationally who can tell upon just a few days of scrutiny that there are so many things wrong with the Clinton Foundation — and Clinton-Bush and other ‘political charities’). This is not about “generic journalist” fact-checkers but subject-matter experts. Regular citizens who are expert at using and analyzing our voluminous academic and industry resources are more than welcome to determine relevant information on important topics of interest to lots of people.

If you don’t know how but want to, I’ll teach you.

Just based on talking to a few people, some of these topics could include

Water quality in all 50 states, not just Flint, MI
Fossil fuel pipelines everywhere, not just #DAPL
Credit policies and discrimination
Access to development funding (hint: there isn’t any right now)
Health disparities and potential causes and solutions
Where in the world are our troops and equipment? ex. thousands of Marines deployed out of Camp Pendleton in October … where did they go?

All of our legacy publications have an “axe to grind”: they have a slant. Furthermore, they have financial motives and most of all, they exist to earn revenue for their owners and stockholders. They aren’t mission- or vision-driven, they are driven by non-sustainable, ever-shifting motives with money, fame and attention being the only constants.

So the motive here is really simple. It’s to figure out a way to meet the needs of a group that we can hopefully identify and grow, not among the 20%, but among the large number who “just read headlines” and/or do not regularly buy and read books because they are not giving them what they need or want.

The “answer” isn’t to dumb it down, make it shorter, make it sexier, make it more “obvious” or play to the lowest common denominator. It isn’t to attach a political name, and it isn’t to recruit a celebrity. It isn’t to say “it’s only 2 minutes to read it!”

Perhaps it’s to not only give information and writing and images and new things we don’t even know will develop yet to people to

inform delight and educate

It is to

enter a dialog just as Medium has provided a place

Simple logic indicates that the lowest common denominator isn’t the larger group who seldom reads or just glances at headlines, it’s the smaller one the whole system is set up to serve; or the ones who want to be a part of the famous, wealthy or other ones “in charge.” It’s the one that puts people down, tells them they are “dumb” because they don’t want to watch the same thing they’ve seen 500,000 times before, and/or that they know they won’t want to look or read because they will just be exposed to yet more ads trying to sell them something they don’t want (whether it be a politician, a war, a lifestyle, or a product).

The goal here isn’t to become rich or to make anyone else rich. It’s to live well, live with respect for ourselves and our world: and thrive.