Bully Publishing: The New Medium Trend
Subverting readers and potential earnings away from Medium writers and pubs
I’m seeing a disturbing trend on Medium. Hardworking Medium writers and pubs are basically having their stories hijacked by other writers. What’s most disturbing is that top tier Medium publications and editors are the offenders.
Take for instance this February 7 story in my publication, Our Human Family.
And now a Cliff’s Notes version of the same story now appears in Momentum by Kelli Maria Korducki, a senior editor at Medium. What Korducki has done is essentially summarized a curated (distributed) story and then disguised it as a new piece that is then redistributed and earns her income.
This is not Fair Use. But it is straight-up bullying, unprofessional, and essentially taking money away from hardworking writers.
What’s more is that neither the writer nor the publication are linked in text of the article as a common courtesy, not that this would make the theft anymore acceptable. It’s almost as if the the culprits don’t want the writers to know what’s going on.
Adding insult to injury, is that Adrienne Samuels Gibbs (Managing Editor at Momentum) specifically solicited a group of writers as to which story was most impactful thus far in Black History Month, the Our Human Family story was mentioned; and not even three days later this same story shows up on Momentum’s homepage.
This is not cool. And sends a horrifying message to writers and open publications on Medium.
With bylines at Ebony, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, St Pete Times as her bio states Adrienne Gibbs should know better and practice ethical standards in writing.
I see this happening with other stories as well with other stories in Momentum and ZORA. This does not look like Fair Use. Is this something all hardworking writers, editors, and publications can look forward to happening with their stories on Medium? Asking for a friend.
Postscript: Links were added to the Momentum bully-published story, but that does not diminish the fact that the truncated version still exists, still compensates a senior Medium writer for readership (on top of whatever she’s pulling in), and still subverts readers and earnings from the original writer, Cocoa Griot. As of this writing on February 19, 2021, at 12:46 a.m. no apology to or change in Medium policy has been made. —CR
Postscript: At our request, Medium has removed their bully-published version of Cocoa Griot’s story. Hopefully, they will make known their plans for remedying this situation so that the same thing doesn’t happen to other Medium writers in the future. —CR, February 20, 2021
