Medium’s Latest Pivot Shows They Want Professionals Instead of Writers

Do Boost Numbers Tell Us the Personal Essay is on the Way Out?

That’s me as a newspaper editor in the old days, fresh out of Journalism school. Times have changed, but I still like good writing. Photo from author’s archives

Complaints about lower earnings have popped up all over the platform, but the biggest issue to me, more relevant than an earnings dip, is that well-written personal essays fitting Medium’s stated criteria for a “Boost” are getting rejected.

Publishers of Boost publications are recommending stories that meet Medium’s lofty standards; stories that would have been “curated” or boosted under the old program. But a couple of months ago, everything changed. Medium’s curators started turning down almost all the nominated articles, leaving publishers, editors, and writers scratching their heads.

What was going on?

Curious minds want to know, and a lot of them aren’t waiting to find out. They’re jumping ship, heading to Substack, talking of creating their own blogs, or working on a book that’s been brewing on their back burner.

Some of us who have been around Medium a long time have experienced so many platform overhauls that we’ve never taken the money for granted. We were never lulled into believing we had finally discovered a viable side hustle. We’ve seen too many people come and go and too many swings of the pendulum to…