MEDIUM
PSILY Is Kaput?
Bad call, Medium. Please reconsider!
I was as shocked and upset as any other Medium writer to learn that the platform had decided to stop funding P.S. I Love You, one of its most popular publications, thus effectively killing it.
PSILY published quality writing. They didn’t publish any dreck or malarkey. They actually edited the work they published.
And they were very good at it.
Even pros like myself appreciated the free upgrade our work got when PSILY took it on. The most popular piece I’ve ever written in my 2+ years on the platform was published by PSILY:
I was thrilled when I learned that they wanted to run it. Not only did it mean that the piece was solid — and would receive a good line edit — but it also meant that it would be curated and reach many more readers. (It’s reached 17.9K so far. Thanks, PSILY!)
Not only did PSILY give me a great place to publish, it also gave me a great place to go when I wanted to read the kind of stories I’m interested in. There are plenty of folks on Medium who would much rather read about relationships than about tech, self help or bitcoin. PSILY was for us.
Medium has gone through plenty of changes since I first got here in February of 2019. I haven’t liked a lot of them, but I’ve stuck around. I thought the decision to favor large, Medium-funded publications over individual writers was misguided. And I’m glad that the Medium poo-bahs have come to see the light and have now reversed it.
But? PSILY is one pub that has proved itself and deserves to stick around. I don’t know what the numbers involved here are, or what metric Medium used to make their decision. But my suspicion is that once they decided to pivot away from giving financial support to publications, they tossed them all rather than deciding whether any individual pubs were worth keeping.
Plenty of folks have written about why they value PSILY and why they’ll miss it when it’s gone. Let me add my voice to that chorus. But let me add something else. Medium — PLEASE reconsider this decision! Don’t trash something of value to both the platform and its readership, just because you’ve decided to move away from publications in general.
This one is a treasure and deserves to live.
(Note: To reach Medium Support about this or any other Medium-related topic, email yourfriends@medium.com.)
Writing Coach and Medium Sherpa Roz Warren writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, has been in 13 Chicken Soup for the Soul collections, and is the author of Just Another Day At Your Local Public Library. Drop her a line at roSwarren@gmail.com.
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