It takes just about a year, before I’m willing to subscribe to any magazine or podcast. If a site can hold my interest that long, they will get my business. Currently, I subscribe to Medium, four Substack writers, two podcasts, the Singapore Straits Times, the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly and Southerly. I also make an annual, voluntary donation to Aeon and the Guardian which I read almost daily.
I followed two Medium writers to Substack and watched them become their own information silos (I will not be renewing my subscription). Medium has very few content writers and tons of filler (Dear Abby, Dear Manners, Dear Editor, and Social columns once seen in old fashioned newspapers and magazines). Wading through all that filler to find the content is a waste of time.
Near as I can tell, Medium and Substack focused on giving bloggers a place to publish their work and expected bloggers to attract readers to their site.
As a reader, navigating Medium and Substack is a frigging nightmare (like playing whack-a-mole). As a reader, I do all the curation work, but Medium and Substack offer me no tools to do that work. I dream of a reader toolbox, and any site that gave me those tools would get my “reading” business in a heartbeat.
Aeon has a different strategy and works to build a readership for writers (whose work and ideas are unknown outside their own circles). Aeon does the curation work for both readers and writers. Expecting me to remember the name of some writer whose work I read once is insane. I remember content, and when I search Aeon, the site finds that content for me.
Over on Medium, many bloggers write the same thing so many times, it turns to formula shit. Nonetheless, they expect to make a living as a writer and complain publicly when they don’t earn enough money.
The problem with Medium has nothing to do with writers and everything to do with readers. I suspect Medium is trying so hard to please writers, they haven’t figured out just yet, that NOT pleasing readers is their problem and writers’ problem.
Erik, if you do start writing a Nordic Perspective on Substack, please let me know and I will subscribe. I am particularly interested in Denmark’s water technology industry. My work in rural California and Kentucky includes agriculture and resource extraction and Denmark’s water technology is proving a game changer in these rural areas.
Anyways, those are my thoughts.
