Rant

Medium’s Editor Partner Program Sounds Good

For Small Publications, It May Be a Trap

Beefing with Medium

I’ve always had beef with Medium over being an Editor for their platform. I edit a little pub (Open Microphone) since 2024. I’ve been around even longer. My beef with Medium is simply this: Editing for Medium has been largely unpaid work.

And that was before Ai started spamming my inbox. Right now, I have an article waiting that was clearly and irritatingly Ai generated. All the hallmarks are there. Em — dashes. Point formatting. General mundane information you could get from a simple web search. Nothing resonated and, most telling, the author had exceeded their quota for publishing articles in one day.

It’s Ai slop.

I had to read through it, decide whether to publish it or not, decide whether I should confront the writer or not, and check whether the artwork used was permissible or not. There goes 10 minutes of my life I won’t ever get back.

So why did I bother to make the effort?

Honestly I can’t tell you, I don’t have a good reason for being an editor, particularly when it takes away from my time to write. It doesn’t give me any prestige. It hasn’t brought much growth. It hasn’t built some grand sense of community.

I guess I just enjoy a little bit of suffering so I keep doing it.

The Editor Partner Program

It gave me hope when Medium announced their Editor Partner Program. They framed it as the long overdue recognition of the labor we do as editors for their corporation. Medium is saying the quiet part out loud finally — editors do real work. Work they’d rather not do.

And for small publication editors who don’t meet their eligibility requirements, we just have to keep on editing for free till we pass their threshold.

Just so that the threshold is clear, a publication must have paywalled stories earning at least $200 collectively in qualifying months, publish work from at least 2 writers, remain open to submissions and keep on doing it for 3 out of 6 months.

That means a small editor may spend months doing exactly the work Medium says it values — curating, screening, improving and maintaining quality — without receiving anything from the program at all.

With the Ai slop sloshing around the platform, it’s obvious Medium has a quality control problem. I see it almost daily both in editing and reading articles on the platform. Low-effort writing, spam, self promotion, recycled advice and inane drivel that often has me grinding my teeth.

That’s where we come in as editors. We have ‘taste’. We can filter out the crap before it clogs up the feed.

So why are the smallest editors being asked to perform that judgement essentially for free until the publications we serve become financially useful?

That’s my beef. Sadly it hasn’t changed since April of 2024.

I’m trying to write, grow an audience, and stay visible on the platform. All of us know all to well what happens the day after you don’t post or engage with Medium, you essentially disappear.

If I want to become eligible for the Editor Partner Program, I’ll have to redouble my efforts to promote my publication, which would increase the amount of editorial work I have to do. For my pub, I have the job of setting the tone, welcoming newcomers, removing bad actors, and deciding what belongs and what gets denied. And then, I have to go back and forth with authors to help them improve their articles to fit the publication.

I’m not an employee of Medium.

To anyone contemplating starting a publication, keep in mind, at the beginning stages of a publication, the work is the hardest, the rewards are the weakest and the effort often unsustainable. There is an element of masochism in there somewhere.

Eventually you’ll ask yourself the question I keep circling back to: Are you building a community or simply performing unpaid platform maintenance?

For larger publications, the program may be meaningful. They already have an audience, likely have steady submissions, multiple editors and stories earning enough to cross the threshold.

But for small editors, the program is a promise. Keep working. Keep filtering. Keep improving the platform. Keep building community. Then one blessed day, if the numbers work, you may qualify.

It’s not nothing. But it’s not the same as compensation.

Editing Under Pressure

There’s also a dark side to the Editor Partner Program that isn’t being discussed enough. People already have a tendency to regard writing on Medium as either a job or a side hustle. In my experience, it’s neither. Most of us get peanuts for the time we spend here. (Maybe we’re all masochists.)

But if we’re chasing earnings, editors may well accept more submissions, try to manage more writers and try to keep the publication active waiting to cross the earnings threshold. That means more slop will get published. I’m an editor, I’ll admit it, the thought has crossed my mind.

I won’t do it of course. But the temptation is there and not everyone has scruples.

If editors publish too little, the publication may never grow. If we publish too much, the publication becomes a second job. If I edit too many articles, I end up writing too little. If I don’t edit properly and weak articles get through, the publication will not develop the quality Medium claims to want.

It’s a predicament.

What Can Be Improved

From the get go, Medium could provide more support for small publications before we cross the threshold. Smaller starter payments for active editors for example. Or perhaps find a way to reward publication owners for quality control even before revenue reaches $200.

It could mean better editorial tools, clearer templates or some way to keep Ai slop from reaching editors in the first place.

Until then, I’ll be honest, I’m not going to edit as if I’m already being paid. Sure I’ll curate sharply. I’ll probably only accept work that’s 80% ready and I’ll reject quickly. Likely this will result in fewer pieces being published.

So be it.

I’ll keep it real, as a small publisher, editing right now is unpaid curation with a possible future upside. Hardly something I’m going to devote my finite time above ground doing for more than a couple hours per week, if that.

Medium got it right, editors matter. But if we matter, then small editors matter too, not only after they cross some revenue threshold, but while we’re doing the difficult invisible work of building something from little or nothing.

I hope this piece finds receptive ears. In the meantime, Walk Good. Mitch.

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