I view Medium not like a news or blog, but at its best - like the OpEd page of a major newspaper. Medium destroys the average newspaper website experience - ad crazy garbage everywhere.
They should lock down public figures who are writing important articles.
For instance, why not put someone like a Colin Powell on a retainer, to write regular articles, and he writes exclusively for Medium. There are some powerful figures like that - retired, out of political offce. Meanwhile they should be also finding the young important voices of the future, who can be had cheap at this point.
What you describe is basically running an online magazine or media organization. You hire writers to write pieces, and users pay a subscription fee. This is what the NYT times. The article mentioned that this was their original business plan but it was scrapped.
As it is, I never go directly to Medium, I only read their articles when an aggregator like HN links to it. If Powell wrote for them, then some percentage of those random visits I'd go "huh. Colin Powell."
I'm going to disagree. I think exclusive blogging content is kind of fundamentally opposed to "how the written internet works" (imo). Building yet another paywall strikes me as a bad idea. I much prefer "soft exclusive" where your site is the preferred one because you make it easy for the writer and the consumer. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd rather build a "Twitch for journalism" than a "Netflix for journalism" because you compete with free content and a culture of free (Twitch vs. private websites/Youtube etc.) and not vs. other premium content (Netflix vs. TV). Or put yet another way...you don't compete with the Washington Post, you compete with insightful forum discussions and quality private blogs.
Building a good way to monetize good writing is a very hard problem.
It would if they then syndicated the posts to publications around the world. German newspapers and magazines, for example, could have their pick of prominent writers they otherwise would not have access to and couldn't afford.
No sharing. Prominent people's opinions in Medium articles would make news and drive people to Medium content. "Colin Powell calls Trumps immigration policy misguided". That's a global headline. Traffic rules.
Everyone tries to think like a VC. Medium will never be the biggest money. What they can do is be the next '60 Minutes', not the biggest, but prestigous and elevating.
Having Powells weekly column is more valuable and provides something you can plan around and build a business model around. You can't do that with social media snippets.
You seem to be equating prominent writers with more revenue. But the real question is how do you get enough revenue even with prominent writers. It just' doesn't scale.
No, its not the quality of the content which makes it a business, this is exactly the misunderstanding of the whole mission to save journalism. Its never been a business to begin with.
They should lock down public figures who are writing important articles.
For instance, why not put someone like a Colin Powell on a retainer, to write regular articles, and he writes exclusively for Medium. There are some powerful figures like that - retired, out of political offce. Meanwhile they should be also finding the young important voices of the future, who can be had cheap at this point.