There is a huge difference between the NYTimes and Medium. For readers, the content on Medium is fungible: if it goes away today, it's easily replaceable by the 100 other user driven sites like it. I'm not saying that the content on Medium is bad, but it's easily replaceable.
The NYTimes provides a level of journalism that is not easily replaceable by letting a bunch of random people blog. That's why their subscription works. True there are other journalism sites. But there are also many actors, but only one Tom Cruise; the NYTimes is like Tom Cruise, which is why he is paid so much. Medium is more like an unknown actor that is good but there are 100 waiting to replace him.
The best of Medium is better than the best of the NYTimes and isn’t fungible at all. That’s not refuting what you see. To get those gems you see too many me too articles. You are right.
This is delusional, the best of Medium isn’t exclusive to Medium. The New York Times has over 150 years of reputation built on quality, and its content is available no where else. Medium has a loose collective of bloggers who can easily migrate to a different platform with no requirements on the quality of the content they produce. If you want to compare yourself to the NYT it’s not enough to have a few good articles, every article has to be held to the highest standards of trust and the vast majority must be exclusive.
You probably think too highly of the times. They have access though more than quality. They are the official communication channel of the US government and that alone makes them unique and important. It’s comparable to a subscription to a standards library or government code book
That’s going too far. The NYTimes is playing a different game in a different league and a comparison is not apt.
I have read really interesting material on Medium and it’s just not enough to make me want to pay to read _any_ content on Medium. I might pay to remove ads like I do on YouTube but only after developing a habit that is triggered by content I care enough about and visit often enough for the ads experience to detract from it.
In my experience Medium should have been (could still be?) a Wordpress killer and not a publishing play.
That is a good point...if you had some way of putting this amazing content at the top, then Medium would have a chance. In that regard I think Medium has the same problem as Soureforge.
I've seen tons of medium articles and to me it always seemed like random ranting and a pulpit for leftists, rather than a serious platform. I hope you can do something about it.
Perhaps something like the Top 2/5/whatever medium articles a day/week are absolutely free to everyone - a taste. And then if you subscribe you get a larger amount of similarly good articles right below.
I’ll admit I don’t bother with the NYT or Medium or Subspace, but if I ever were to subscribe it’d be along those lines.
Even if that were true, it doesn’t matter. The NYT is THE NYT and Medium is just another Quora/Pinterest/rando website.
Medium has not earned the right to paywall content, the NYT has, apparently.
You need to find another way.
Maybe a pay by the drink subscription model.
Put a button on each article so I can decide how much I want to pay, with zero as an option.
Put a little counter at the top so I can see how much I’ve spent this month and how much has gone to authors vs the company.
If the content is that good, people will pay, I know I would. But I ain’t paying monthly for something I don’t use regularly and I ain’t paying to read something based on a title.
The NYTimes provides a level of journalism that is not easily replaceable by letting a bunch of random people blog. That's why their subscription works. True there are other journalism sites. But there are also many actors, but only one Tom Cruise; the NYTimes is like Tom Cruise, which is why he is paid so much. Medium is more like an unknown actor that is good but there are 100 waiting to replace him.