Written media outlets have not had the best year in 2023:
- Washington Post, NPR, and Insider all announced layoffs.
- Vice had to be acquired out of bankruptcy.
- Buzzfeed shut down its Pulitzer-prize winning News Division and laid off 15% of staff after poor financial performance.
- Meta’s Twitter competitor Threads supposedly lost 80% of its users after its record launch.
Blogging platform Medium (yes, this one) is no exception, except maybe that their troubles have gone on longer: the company announced layoffs in both 2021 and 2022. The platform has been described by its own writers as slowly dying.
And yet — the opposite might be true.
Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine hosted a keynote on August 12 during the first ‘Medium Day’, and let the audience in on some performance data. When Tony joined 13 months ago, Medium had its worst month in terms of subscriber attrition. Since then, his team has not only stemmed the loss in Medium’s membership. They have reversed it. The decade-plus old platform is growing paid members. Digging in more — August is poised to be one of Medium’s best months for new members.
Medium’s quarterly membership changes turned positive in Q2 ‘23. Source: Medium Day 2023
Zooming into Medium’s change in monthly membership by month, 2023. Source: Medium Day 2023
Now, these are early trends. But turning around a media business (particularly this year) is no easy feat.