Is the New Medium CEO Planning to Tighten Up on Curation?
Things are already starting to change on Medium, and it’s just the beginning.
On July 12, the then CEO of Medium Ev Williams announced that he is stepping down from the position in his post titled New Decade, New Ideas.
The post was almost in time for Medium’s 10th anniversary.
In that announcement, Ev Williams reassured the community that the story of Medium is far from over.
He entrusted the position to a long-time partner of the company.
Who is taking over as the new CEO of Medium? The honor goes to Tony Stubblebine, also known as Coach Tony.
Tony Stubblebine talks to the community
Tony Stubblebine isn’t some random newcomer on Medium. Actually, he has been behind the scenes for a long time.
You might know the new CEO of Medium from the successful publications he founded: Better Humans, Better Marketing, and Better Programming.
Just a few days after the announcement, Sinem Günel, a successful Medium writer, had a live stream interview with Tony Stubblebine about his plans as the new head of Medium.
On the live stream, members of the community were able to ask the two some questions like how to fix the disparity in incomes of Medium writers.
It’s not a secret that only 1% of Medium writers get paid more than 100$ a month — a problem they’ve been having for years now.
Other questions for writers were asked. Questions writers have been trying to voice out to Medium for years.
But, the most interesting question for me was about curation.
What’s next for Medium curation?
Speaking as a writer who started in 2019, how Medium curates articles right now is different from back then.
There used to be an impact when your article gets curated — you’ll see more traction, which is the whole point of curation.
As a new writer on the platform, you’ll actually get a sense of pride. Right now, almost all my articles are curated.
Even the ones I feel shouldn’t be.
Truthfully, I prefer when there was a challenge in it.
Medium definitely let loose on its curation policies, and now even the new CEO Tony Stubblebine thinks so too.
“..there’s a point where so much got curated that being curated didn’t affect your distribution really at all,” says Tony Stubblebine when asked about the topic.
He then agreed with a writer who gave their two cents about curation that it should definitely be addressed.
Does he want to tighten up on Medium’s curation policies? It’s sounding like a yes.
With the change of CEO along comes a lot of internal changes.
Hearing how the new CEO speaks for writers knowing he has first-hand experience with handling publications sparks a little hope on what kind of changes that would entail.
Changes are coming but only time will tell how they will impact the Medium community.
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