Another pivot, another burned bridge and again, publications pay as support for subscriptions on Medium^[1] are abruptly terminated.

This is a moment of real pain for the publishing industry. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answers. Whomever was lured over should have stayed on their own properties, true. But we must remember they would have done, if they felt they had any legs to stand on. It’s clear in hindsight what should have happened, but I imagine it felt just as obvious that this was a better deal.

What dies when the traditional publishing model goes is a trusted brand with an established voice and norms. Smaller players have a lot of room to grow into the publishing space, so long as overhead stays low, but we may never be able to lean on reputable local publications again. News, information and expertise will need to be found through smaller, probably one-person brands which might cause even further exacerbation of the signal v. noise problem. See the growth of YouTube and Instagram influencers as the bellwether here.

(H/T Owen Williams’ Charged)

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1. I'm intentionally not linking to one of the world’s most prominent blogging platforms, not out of spite, rather a prophecy that they will probably tumble in the not-so-distant future. ↩︎