I couldn’t disagree more — the best thing about Medium is reading non-journalistic work. If I wanted to read the work of professional journalists filtered through the eyes of an editor, I would have paid membership to an online paper.

I am seeing a lot of the same names cropping up on my homepage time and time again, heavily pushed and promoted by the Medium algorithm. I rarely click them — instead I generally look around my network and the topics and writers I’m most interested in. That includes you.

What made Medium appealing to me in the first place was writers like you, people honing their craft outside of rigorous editing and journalistic ideologies. Stay at home Mums, teachers, university lecturers, builders, every day poets and the lay experts, whose work wasn’t perfect — but whose ideas and concepts were interesting and different.

They de-monetised the amateur writer in favour of an elitist pitching system which favours those most familiar with journalistic process. They also employed a handful of paid journalists on each publication whose work is over promoted to keep the publication wheels turning. Their work is good (in the most part) but it’s very ‘on message’ for whatever the issue du jour is. That’s how journalists work.

Medium publications are in danger of turning of what should be celebration of all writing into a slightly left of centre newspaper/magazine subscription.

I feel it’s sad that a Medium editor is now teaching you how to write like a journalist, your occasional rambles and angry outbursts were what drew me to your writing in the first instance. Sure… it’s not the journalistic standard, but that’s kinda the point.

We still disagree on a lot of things — but you’re always a damn good read. Proofed and edited or not.