“Is there any way for a platform like Medium to keep up with high quality posts while also paying their writers well?”
To me, this is the essential question. I’ve been writing on medium since May of 2019 and for a while there was a real sense of community and camaraderie. I met some of my closest writing friends and mentors there. But there was a growing sense of gaming the system in the writing communities that made me increasingly uncomfortable. Share threads where writers were supposed to read (and clap for and comment on ) everyone else’s pieces if they expected to be able to share theirs. But what it ended up amounting to was mostly a circle jerk of writers reading other writers’ stuff, quality be damned.
The curation engine was good for awhile and drove worthwhile engagement and earnings, but then it fell apart, too. I make less than $10/month from my two accounts now, enough to offset the cost of my 2 memberships.
Back to the original question, I don’t know how a media company could pay editors to spend the eyes-on time it takes to judge quality and also pay writers a reasonable amount without becoming a traditional media company that hires freelance writers to hodgepodge it up. All those standalone stories with no organization makes my head spin. And consumers (who are able) are increasingly unwilling to pay for a subscription to such a company, especially to a media business with a lack of focus that has not proven its value.
I always thought Medium was written for readers and exploited the hell out if its writers, but then their business model started being about neither readers nor writers.
I truly do believe Substack’s model is superior in that readers pay to support authors or creators they find worthwhile rather than paying the platform ant large and trying to wade through the morass of indefensibly low quality work (or, more likely, forgetting you subscribed in the first place until the renewal email comes). It’s a different kind of platform, but more versatile and feels more homey.