A critique of Ev Williams' 10-year tenure at Medium and how it got caught in the middle between Substack and well-funded publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice
How Medium got stuck in the middle. PLUS: Twitter sues Musk — Few tech CEOs can claim to have steered the course of online conversation more than Ev Williams.
PlatformerCasey Newton
Context & Ripple Effects
The critique lands on the same day Medium announced Ev Williamsstepping down as CEO, with Coach.me's Tony Stubblebine taking over and Williams moving to a new holding company and research lab. It closes a decade that earlier coverage has tracked closely: a timeline of Medium's own statements shows repeated repositioning, and back in 2016 Williams was still pitching Medium to Twitter while arguing publicly for the open web against corporate consolidation.
The verdict that he got caught in the middle also follows an internal unraveling — last year's mass exodus of non-editorial staff after his culture-shifting memo already signaled a company losing its way before the market squeeze became the story.
First-order effects
Stubblebine inherits a platform with no defensible position: Substack owns the direct-subscription writer relationship while well-funded publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice own scale, leaving Medium's middle ground structurally weak from day one.
Williams exits operating duties entirely, shifting his attention to a new holding company and research lab rather than fixing the company he founded.
Second-order effects
Writers choosing where to publish now face a starker two-option market — Substack's subscription economics or funded publishers' reach — which pressures Medium to either pick a side or differentiate fast under new leadership.
Rivals have little reason to compete for the abandoned middle: Substack can absorb departing Medium writers without changing its model, reinforcing its pull on the same talent pool.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, founder-led 'middle layer' publishing platforms become acquisition targets or niche services, as independent writing consolidates around either subscription-native tools or capitalized media companies.
The arc from Williams' 2016 open-web advocacy to this exit suggests the decentralized-web argument keeps losing to platforms that solve distribution and money in one product — a structural headwind any successor CEO faces, not just Medium.
The trend: Independent publishing is polarizing between subscription-native platforms like Substack and well-funded media companies, squeezing general-purpose middle-layer platforms out of the market.
Good read. For a couple years after Medium launched, its algorithm was a cut above. It surfaced good writing from people I didn't know. Then something got tweaked and the magic was gone - dated content and press releases. They ruined the best part of the platform years ago. https…
@biz It's been a gratifying, challenging, creative, fun, hard, fascinating journey for me running this company. And it's time for me to hand over the reins. https://ev.medium.com/...
Been reading @ev on and about the web for 20+ years and while he doesn't post as often as he once did, the quality remains incredibly high. ❤️ https://ev.medium.com/... https://twitter.com/...
As a longtime Medium contributor, I find this news interesting, though not necessarily concerning. Medium has always had potential but it needs to choose its course and stick to it. https://www.nytimes.com/...
First off - congratulations to Ev. I read articles on Medium every single day. Every day. So many voices get a chance to be heard and discovered. And the business has come a long way too. What he has built and run for a decade is fantastic and I am glad to see new roads ahead htt…
Sad about this but I am grateful to @ev for once again—after Blogger and Twitter—giving more people more ways to speak online. He is a quiet visionary and I look forward to what comes next. Evan Williams Is Stepping Down as C.E.O. of Medium https://www.nytimes.com/...
Please forgive my momentary lapse into meanness: turns out another-rich-white-guy-with-a-savior- complex, not the freakin savior of media. How many times have we seen this story in last few decades? https://twitter.com/...
Love this news — @tonystubblebine is a great choice to lead @Medium. I'm hoping they double-down on what they've been great at (for all the pivots & changes, they have a huge audience that's not dependent on shitty hot takes or surveillance-based ads) and help the indie web. http…
*take 2* Ev stepping down as CEO of MEDIUM New CEO @tonystubblebine worked at Odeo way back in the day before Odeo morphed into Twitter https://t.co/rdR6N8Ltaj
Having used any and every writing platform on the internet over the past 20-odd years, @Medium remains the absolute best CMS from a writing perspective. Which is wild that it's been the case 10 years in a row. Few things hold titles that long around these parts... https://twitter…