Medium, the website that gives individual writers a platform
and in recent years started its own online magazines, offered voluntary buyouts
to all of its editorial staff Tuesday as it announced it was scaling back its
journalism.
اضافة اعلان
During a monthly all-hands meeting conducted by
videoconference, the staff members were also told that Siobhan O’Connor, the
vice president for editorial since 2018, would be leaving the company.
Evan Williams, a Twitter co-founder who started Medium in 2012,
explained in a long email to the staff after the meeting that Medium was
“making some changes” to its publishing strategy. He said Medium would reduce
the budgets of the publications run by the company and redirect resources to
supporting independent writers on the platform.
Medium has struggled to find its footing with independent
journalism. It began as a blogging platform, allowing anyone to publish, with
the goal of building “a new model for media on the internet.” In 2017, the
company laid off a third of its workers — 50 people — after Williams decided to
turn away from ad-driven content. In 2019, the company ramped up its own
journalism efforts with the introduction of OneZero, a tech and science
publication, which was followed by others, including GEN (politics and
culture), Elemental (health) and Zora (women of color).
“Our goal was never to replicate the traditional publishing
model because we saw the challenges the industry was going through,” Williams
wrote in Tuesday’s email.
He said that Amplify, a program that offered editing and
promotion for writers on the platform, had worked well, but that commissioning
stories from professional writers for Medium’s publications had been less
successful.
“To be clear, we had no illusion these publications were
going to pay for themselves in the short term,” he said. “The bet was that we
could develop these brands, and they would develop loyal audiences that would
grow the overall Medium subscriber base. What’s happened, though, is the Medium
subscriber base has continued to grow, while our publications’ audiences
haven’t.”
Some staff members wept on the video call, according to two
people with knowledge of the meeting, who were not authorized to speak
publicly. Employees were told that they did not have to take the buyouts but
that their jobs would most likely change if they stayed, the people said.
Those who take the buyouts will receive five months’ salary
as a lump sum and six months of health benefits. The fate of the Medium
publications was uncertain, with Williams saying in the email that it would
take “a lot more experimentation to figure out what their role is on the
platform.”
Less than a month ago, a union drive at Medium failed. The
Medium Workers Union fell one vote short of a simple majority of workers needed
for union recognition, it said in a statement on March 1.
A Medium spokesperson said in a statement that the company
remained “fully committed to high-quality editorial and to the open platform
model that supports independent writers.”
“The voluntary buyout reflects changes we’re making to our
editorial team to create a more flexible organization that focuses on both,”
the statement read.
The spokesperson said Medium’s content operation would be
led by Jermaine Hall and Scott Lamb after O’Connor’s departure.
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