Here’s Why I’m Not Entering Medium’s New Writers Contest

Medium is a blogging platform that pays writers on a royalty system. If you’re a paying Medium member ($5/month) I earn a small portion of that simply from you reading this story. In my opinion, it’s a great system that lets writers focus on writing for their audience.

Recently Medium announced a Medium Writers Challenge with four prompts and a whole crowd of celebrity judges, including folks like Natalie Portman, Saeed Jones, and Jude Ellison S. Doyle, all of whom I love. 

It sounds great, and I wish luck to everyone who enters. Here’s why I won’t be entering.

There’s a Better Writing Challenge Alternative 

And it’s Vocal. Vocal is a similar writing platform I’ve reviewed before (see my video here and read my Medium vs Vocal review here). Like Medium, when you write on Vocal, you get paid based on reads and there’s a similar curation mechanism. The difference is that Vocal runs regular Challenges, not just one-off events. 

And they’re a bit more transparent about how the whole thing is run, too. When you submit a Challenge through Vocal, they give you a lot more information about the prompt, why they chose those particular judges, etc. You can see all the previous entries to measure up what (and how many) you’re against. 

But the main thing Vocal Challenges have going for them is that they’re run a ton of them in the past. They know what they’re doing. Their whole brand is built on their Challenges. Have a look at the page here and you’ll see what I mean — there are so many of them, each clearly defined and outlined. A flavor for any writer.

If I were going to enter a writing challenge this summer, it will be one of Vocal’s. I pay a monthly fee to submit to their Vocal+ Challenges, which opens up the field a bit. I can scan the ones that look interesting (including a bunch of fiction ones!) and I can see the winners of previous Challenges, to know what Vocal looks for. 

And weirdly, the aspect I like most is that some of them are sponsored by actual brands. This helps me understand where the money is coming from and what Vocal stands to gain. It’s a partnership between them, the brand, and the writer. It makes sense to me.

So even if there weren’t some slightly dodgy aspects to Medium’s challenge, I’d choose Vocal’s anyway.

But there are some slightly dodgy aspects. 

The Slightly Dodgy Aspects

A few things made my brows raise as I read Medium’s post on their challenge.

The first warning bell was when they said, “With the help of the judging panel, Medium will select four finalist winners…” (I did the bolding here.)

Despite giving us the names of all the judges, they’re not even the final word on the winners. They’re an influence, to help “Medium” make the decision. We don’t even know WHO at Medium would make the decision. This made me believe that the judges were mostly there for star power rather than to provide helpful judging decisions. 

I respect Natalie Portman a lot, but I’m not sure why she has top billing when far more experienced authors and writers are included in the judges' list. It also rankles me that they probably paid her more to be a judge than they’ll be giving out to all the writers for winning.

The second issue was the “rights grab.” I’m not a lawyer or a publisher, but I pay attention when those people speak up about these issues. I was alarmed when I saw in David Majister’s piece that publishing experts and writers were worried about Medium’s terms. 

Aigner Loren Wilson concluded, “Medium is using its platform of working with writers who aren’t familiar with how publishing works to get free stories and ideas to use anyway [sic] they please.”

Especially when Medium’s motivation for these challenges is so nebulous to begin with, it does concern me. I don’t know why they chose those prompts, I don’t know how they chose their judges, I don’t know why they’ve decided to run these writing challenges now. 

Unlike Vocal, where the benefit to all parties (brands too!) is clear to me, Medium’s choice leaves me with questions.

I Don’t Believe Medium is Trying to Screw Us Over

I read Majister’s piece with some worries, but ultimately I don’t believe Medium is trying to screw us over. 

One of his main points was that for the past three months, Medium has paid monthly bonuses to the top 2,000 writers, paying out an unbelievable $2.25 million. That luscious pot of money, so rare for writers, has shrunk to a much more modest $100,000 across two months, awarded to challenge winners. 

Translation: it’s no longer enough to write stories that perform well with your audience — which has always been Medium’s priority, and how the bonuses were awarded! — but now you have to write for a panel of judges (and apparently some random group of Medium employees, still unnamed). To me, it is against Medium’s typical ethos of “we don’t judge what you do —you find an audience with your writing, and they’ll pay you.”

All that said, I don’t believe Medium is a villain. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think they concocted this scheme to steal the rights to thousands of stories. (What would they even do with them?) I don’t think it’s a ploy to make us feel like we’re still getting money even when that pot has been significantly reduced. 

I suspect they’ll do something different with those spare millions of dollars — maybe put it back into the Partner Program, so now we’ll get that money as the regular part of our performance rather than separated out as a bonus. Maybe it’ll be something completely different.

But to me, the benefits (possibly $100, probably nothing) are not enough to merit changing the way I write on Medium for a panel of mostly faceless judges, when there’s an alternative just around the corner that already has all the kinks ironed out. 

I’ll continue writing stories on Medium for my audience, not judges.