The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present

The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me seven times, well…how much money do you have, again?

Less than a year after Medium abruptly canceled the membership programs of its remaining publishing partners, the company is coming back around like an ex promising you they’ve changed. “We are seeking partners to create new publications on Medium, which we will help fund and distribute,” it said in a blog post Tuesday.

It’s not the first time, of course. Medium is nearly seven years old. It’s raised $132 million in venture funding, and it is not profitable. It has undergone countless pivots. When I saw that new search for “partners” last week, I started trying to count how many — and then ended up documenting the history of Medium via articles and tweets and Ev Williams statements.¹ Why do that? I don’t know. I guess I was trying to figure the company out in my own head.

Medium made it possible for anyone to blog and be seen. On August 14, 2012, when Ev Williams publicly launched Medium, he wrote, “On Medium, you can contribute often or just once in a blue moon, without the commitment of a blog. And either way, you’re publishing into a thriving, pulsing network — not a standalone web site, which you alone are responsible for keeping alive.” Today, that’s still true and is arguably the best thing about Medium. This year, for instance, Jeff Bezos used Medium to reveal the National Enquirer’s efforts to blackmail him. Bezos might have used something else if Medium didn’t exist, but it does seem as if some of the very early hopes that the platform would democratize blogging has been achieved. Other noteworthy posts that might not have gotten nearly as much traction if they hadn’t been published on Medium (and that might not have even been written if Medium hadn’t existed) include James Bridle’s 2017 investigation into YouTube kids’ videos, “I made the pizza cinnamon rolls from Mario Batali’s sexual misconduct apology letter,” “When the racist is someone you know and love,” and “Living and dying on Airbnb.” And please never forget “Just checking in.”

But Medium has also done a number of not-so-great things. It’s sometimes been called a “YouTube for text,” but unlike YouTube, there are no Medium-native stars. Rather, the company has typically hired and promoted the work of editors and writers who were already well known. Many of them were able to head back to legacy publications or other ventures when their Medium publications folded; people whose careers weren’t as established, or who were starting publications on Medium from scratch, often haven’t been so lucky. And partnering with Medium arguably hastened the decline of some beloved sites (R.I.P. The Awl).

How much does that matter? (On a large scale — it obviously matters a lot to the individual people whose careers have been affected.) Even if Medium never raises more money from VCs, Williams’ personal wealth hovers in the wings as a possible savior — if not to the entire publishing industry (definitely not), then maybe to some individual publication. If not to some individual publication (probably not), then maybe to an individual writer or two. That promise of not-totally-evil money has kept people coming back, pulling new writers and editors in when the old, disillusioned ones leave or get kicked out. The promise of cash and the freedom to write what you’re passionate about has always been there, because Williams — who truly seems to hold an idealistic vision of what Medium could be — has never stopped promising it (well, except for a brief weird period in 2015 when he tried to reframe Medium as a kind of social network). One big thing that sets Medium apart from other unsuccessful media ventures is that its flow of money has never been completely shut off.

I want to be clear: I don’t blame people who go do something for Medium. Seriously, grab that money while it’s there. In 2015, after I was laid off, I talked to people at Medium about starting a parenting publication there. It was something that I mighthave received a few thousand dollars to do. I joined Nieman Lab instead, but that freedom (?) and potential money still float in and out of my mind. Some of the news stories I’ve written about Medium have been too credulous; I’ve taken too much of Williams’ startup speak at face value. I (and many others) devoted what now seems like way too much mental energy to the “Is Medium a platform or a publisher?” question. Sure, Williams’ frequently shifting stated vision didn’t help, but that angst still feels ridiculously quaint in 2019.

Why spend so much time worrying about what Medium is? Maybe because we wanted to know whether it was a friend or an enemy. The answer is that it’s neither. It’s a reflection of what the media industry has worried about, and hoped for, and not received. But Medium was never something that we would get to define. Instead, it’s turned out to be an endless thought experiment into what publishing on the internet could look like. That’s not much fun for people who got burned along the way, but Medium was never exactly ours to begin with.