Updates to Medium’s Curation and Distribution System

Medium is becoming more relational in order to give writers more freedom and agency over building and maintaining relationships with their audience. Our goal is to create the best of both worlds: An open and simple platform where anyone can publish — once, occasionally, or often — that also allows for deeper connections between readers and writers. We want to simplify the publishing process. Today we made the following changes:

1. Every post published on Medium is eligible for further distribution. Writers no longer need to submit their stories for curation review.
2. Only writers enrolled in the Medium Partner Program will have the option to place their stories behind the metered paywall. If they choose to do so, their stories are eligible to earn money. Medium will no longer put posts behind the paywall in exchange for distribution.
3. We have simplified the notifications and labelling of your story’s distribution status. This involves removing the topics listed on your stats page (for new and previous stories), in favor of a more general message.

Our intention with these updates — and the ones to come — is to accurately portray our distribution system to writers. And we know we have more work to do.

We still value editorial curation but recognize that our system did not always serve writers as well as it could. Our goal with a more relational Medium is to make it easier for writers to build and connect with their readership. We don’t want curation to be a hindrance to that. We will discover and promote stories, and are investing in improving our mechanisms for doing so. While we will continue to use topics behind the scenes to improve our recommendations to readers, we will no longer show topic designations to writers. That’s because topics are just one avenue, of many on Medium, for readers to connect with your writing.

We are very focused on improving the writer experience as we head into 2021. Our goal is to make Medium the best place for you to share your stories.

Learn more about Medium’s distribution system.