Subscribe to the Medium Newsletter: Get motivated, stay informed, learn something new
Discover great Medium stories with our new newsletter
There are so many gems hidden across the Mediumverse, some of which may even be written by you, containing wisdom that can help all of us live better.
But finding them isn’t always easy! Over 1 million times a month, a writer presses “publish” to share their story with the world. So, we started a newsletter: Every weekday, we share a hand-picked selection of stories that complete and complement conversations happening in the world.
We’re calling it The Medium Newsletter. It’s already reaching over a million readers every weekday, making it one of the most-read newsletters on the internet.
Subscribe and browse the archive here.
Our mission is Medium’s: to deepen our collective understanding. Each story contains the type of writing I’ve come to think of as uniquely Medium-y: first-person stories from people with something deeply human to share.
That ranges from artist and designer James Buckhouse’s guide to finishing what you start, to essayist jen murphy parker’s reflection on dropping her kids off at college, advertising exec Marcus Wesson’s insights on political campaign typography, or Niklas Göke’s research into the 365 most famous quotes of all time.
Each newsletter is our attempt to connect what’s happening on Medium with what’s happening in the world and in people’s lives. We always begin with Medium stories that deepen understanding in some way — meaning they motivate, inform, inspire, and connect you to new knowledge, deep human wisdom, and fascinating conversations happening across Medium and beyond.
Why The Medium Newsletter matters to you
Receiving this email puts you at the center of a conversation we’re having daily with over a million people. If you’re a writer, appearing in the newsletter means your ideas will get in front of all of those people and possibly more.
Here are a few of your responses we’ve gotten so far:
- “You’ve expanded my reading here and for that I’m grateful.”
- “Thank you for drawing our attention to the emoji story in the Medium archive that I would have missed if you hadn’t mentioned it. What a gem.”
- “Thank you for these timely recommendations”
- “Very useful”
- “Highly motivational”
- “This was an incredible piece and embodies why so many of us are on Medium at all. The depth and honesty of writing here is a breath of fresh air in the current media environment.”
- “This story is like a prized slice of wit in a world gone mad.”
Behind the scenes: How we make it
Every day, a team of us here at Medium HQ — our entire curation team, Scott Lamb, Carly Rose Gillis, and I — scour Medium for stories that help people level up in their personal or professional lives, deepen understanding about a timely topic, or stories that just feel uniquely human and worth sharing.
Why do we hand-craft an email every day? Because we’re obsessed with finding great writing and sharing it. We live for discovering new ideas and giving everyone a platform to share their ideas with the world (it’s why we work here). Making this newsletter day in and day out has helped us get to know all of you a bit better — and it’s only been ~160 issues!
We’re always looking for new voices and new perspectives. We keep tabs on who we feature so we can showcase a wide range of writers. Our sources include:
- Our curators, who share notable stories that come in via the Boost Nomination Program and elsewhere on the platform
- Dashboards that show us recently Boosted stories; most-read stories within the last week, month, or year; most-highlighted stories; stories by writers publishing on Medium for the first time; stories by the most referrers from Reddit, X, Facebook, and other social platforms (including email and dark social), and more dashboards we’re creating every day; we’re always looking for new ways to trawl Medium for undiscovered stories and writers
- Medium employees — 90+ engineers, designers, product managers, marketers, communicators, accountants, and people ops professionals — who are reading Medium all the time and recommending stories that move them
- Topic pages, especially for timely topics (e.g. Paralympics)
- Tips from our readers
If you have a story suggestion, pitch us by emailing tips@medium.com with a link to one story you think would be a good fit for the newsletter and 2–3 sentences explaining how it deepens understanding of a topic.
It’s okay if you’re the author (there’s no shame in self-promotion if you’re proud of your story), but we also love to hear from avid readers who are unearthing voices we haven’t heard from yet. Elements of a strong pitch include:
- Your name and a brief description of who you are
- A link to the story you’re recommending
- 1–2 sentences about why this story is important: How does it deepen understanding of a topic? In the words of our Boost guidelines, we’re looking for stories where “there’s a clear and compelling reason why this particular writer is writing about this particular topic, and why the reader should be interested in what they have to say.”
I know that’s pretty broad. To make it more concrete, here’s an example of a strong pitch, which we ended up featuring in issue #148:
It’s something I wrote, but I believe I’ve broken a story even the BBC hasn’t figured out.
The Kamala Harris rally that Trump accused of being AI?
The photos are definitely real, but a Harris staffer has used an AI UPSCALER on the photo, which makes it appear fake and flat, even though it’s real.
I’ve done side by side comparisons with the images BBC Verify received from the Harris campaign, and traced the provenance of the image. Check it out :)
Being able to spot what’s AI and what’s not AI (and what’s just had a tweak for post production) is going to be such an important part of this election cycle, so I think it’s a pressing story!
Jim
Your pitch doesn’t have to be about politics or anything in the news, although it can be; what’s important is to explain why the story you’re pitching matters.
Another, lesser-known way to be featured in the newsletter: read it and leave a thoughtful response (here’s an example). Productive disagreement is one of my favorite parts of the internet, so don’t be shy about disagreeing with something you see in a newsletter! Please correct us. I read every single response and comment, even if I can’t respond to them all, and occasionally feature thoughtful ones in the newsletter itself.
What now?
Subscribe: https://blog.medium.com/newsletter
Read. Start a conversation in the responses. Take an idea we’ve started in a newsletter and use it as a prompt to write something new. And, if you’ve found a story more of us should be reading, pitch us! I’ll see you in our next issue.
