The Medium Model

  By curating and organizing these stories...

This ad ("3 minute read"?) perfectly encapsulates why I can't take Medium seriously in the long term.

If you're going to claim your content (including that in front of the firewall, too) is "curated", you had better apply some basic critique (and, sadly, basic proofreading) to your writers before throwing it up on your wall.

In the past week, I saw two or three excellent longform articles on Medium , and outside the paywall, too. Meanwhile, I perused and abandoned maybe three dozen pieces that were basically ads/selfpromotes or unreadable gibberish. And this was a relatively good week.

When I see the Medium branding (under whatever domain/masthead), I am less likely to click on it, not more. Am I alone?

Curation means standards. It means editing. It means somebody says "no" to accepting and publishing inferior writing. That doesn't seem to happen with Medium.