Hi friends,

We’re making some adjustments to our Writing Hour schedule.

Our new time for Writing Hour is at 10 a.m. ET on various Thursdays throughout the rest of 2025. Please check out the schedule on our registration page to note those dates.

Don’t worry — we’ll be adding more dates for 2026 soon! More on that in our next newsletter.

As a reminder, our Writing Hour is a place to come hang out and simply write with fellow writers. Here’s what to expect:

• No distractions: Microphones are muted for a peaceful and distraction-free environment.
• Focus on your own writing: There are no feedback sessions or discussions.
• Complete freedom: No prompts or assigned topics are given. Write whatever you want or need to!
• Vibes provided: We do like to play chill music to spark some inspiration.

Hope to see you there today!

A new hour for Writing Hour was originally published in Writing Hour on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What if one day on Zoom could kick-start your writing habit?

Ever wanted to tell your story but not sure how, where, or why to start? Come to Medium Day 2025!

On September 19, 2025, join thousands of writers, readers, editors, and Medium staff for live sessions, interactive panels, practical workshops, and publication meetups — all hosted in one place.

Learn how Medium is making it easier for you to write, get inspired by all kinds of different stories, hear from a wide range of writers, connect with writing communities, and come away with the passion to finally hit that publish button on your story.

What is Medium Day?

Medium Day is a free, day-long virtual writing festival that brings together writers of all backgrounds for a celebration of creativity and connection dedicated to the act of “just writing it.”

Here’s what to expect:

• Over 150 live speaker sessions across themed tracks, so you can follow the topics you love most
• Appearances from some of Medium’s most notable and most niche voices
• Interactive Q&As, community conversations, and staff-led product walk-throughs
• A digital Expo Hall with 40+ Medium publications sharing resources and hosting virtual meetups
• A keynote featuring Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine and staff, with updates, exclusive announcements and surprises
• All sessions take place between 8 am and 8 pm ET, and most will be recorded and available for replay after the event

Be inspired: listen to notable writers, niche writers, new writers

There’s no single path to becoming a writer. At Medium Day, you’ll hear from people who’ve written meaningful stories in all kinds of ways. Here are just a few of our early confirmed speakers:

• Joan Westenberg — Writer, journalist, startup founder
• F. Perry Wilson, MD — Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Yale
• Kim Scott — Author of Radical Candor & Radical Respect
• Elwood Watson, Ph.D. — Professor of Black Studies and Gender Studies, at East Tennessee State University
• Liza Donnelly — Visual journalist/writer for New Yorker
• Nir Eyal — Author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
• Enrique Dans — Professor of Innovation at IE Business School
• Dr. Jess Steier — Public health scientist and founder of Unbiased Science
• Pierz Newton-John — Writer, coder, former psychotherapist, founding member of The School Of Life Melbourne
• Aimee Liu — Author, Asian-American novels & nonfiction
• …and over 100 more

Find your people: connect with your community & publications

Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary act. Meet fellow writers and Medium users in Zoom session chats, in our Chill & Chat room available between sessions, and in the event Expo, where 40+ publications will host digital booths with Q&As, submission information, and live editor-led sessions.

Some of our early confirmed publications include:

• The Generator (Thomas Smith) — Covers the emerging field of generative AI, with generative AI news, critical analysis, real-world experiments, and more.
• Wise & Well (Robert Roy Britt) — Science-backed healthy insights you can use to improve your physical, mental and emotional well-being.
• Chronically Ridiculous (Elle Becker) — Memoirs, personal essays, poetry, and fiction from anyone who is impacted by chronic illness.
• Off Message (Andrew Gribben) — An accessibility publication by accessibility professionals and users of assistive technologies.
• A-Culturated (Maria Garcia) — Stories about connection through an intercultural perspective.
• Sharing Science (Sam Westreich, PhD) — Observations and analysis from scientists on biology, health, and how we live and interact with our natural world.
• My Fair Lighthouse (Willow Schroeder) — Poetry and fiction for all phases of the storm.
• Coping With Capitalism (Shawn Jr.) — Providing clear & accessible paths to self and collective care.
• A Mexican Publication (Gaby Rogut) — Stories that explore everything related to Mexico.
• …and many more

Get practical advice: learn how to tell your story on Medium

Throughout the day, speakers will share lessons from their own creative journeys — from poets, podcasters, satire writers, and bloggers to people from all walks of life who choose to share stories through the lens of their personal expertise, such as UX designers, scientists, artists, teachers, parents, and more. Keep an eye on MediumDay.com to see our schedule unfold in the coming weeks.

You’ll also find many Medium staff-led sessions, offering behind-the-scenes looks and demonstrations on how to use our writing tools to find your audience on Medium, including:

• Zulie @ Medium’s 100-Minute Writing Sprint, a five-part workshop series (inspired by our June Writing Challenge) to guide you from blank page to full story — all in one day
• Amy Widdowson’s “Medium For Marketers” talk, on how communications professionals can effectively use Medium for white hat marketing, executive thought leadership, and corporate storytelling.
• Deep dives on features and fixes you need to know about, from engineers and designers across Medium
• A keynote featuring Medium’s CEO Tony Stubblebine and staff that will include exclusive announcements about what’s next for writers on Medium (as well as a few surprises).

Just start writing at Medium Day 2025

Whether you’re a published author, just beginning your writing journey, or just someone with a story to tell, Medium Day 2025 is your invitation to “just start writing.” Register now to get more updates on session talks, confirmed speakers, and more information about the day.

Medium Day 2025: 150+ sessions, workshops, and events to help you ‘Just Start Writing’ was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our annual community event is coming on Sept 19. Register now.

Medium Day is September 19, 2025. Save the date by registering now.

At our annual Medium Day event, we’ll be making room for fresh starts, blank pages, and new beginnings — and all you need to bring is an open mind.

Medium Day is a free, live, online conference where we’re bringing our amazing community together to celebrate the power of writing. We’ll be hosting it on Zoom Events, which will house dozens of livestream sessions and activities throughout the day.

You can expect to learn how writers crafted their most popular stories, how they found real-world opportunity through their work, and how they elevated their expertise through their writing practice. You’ll also discover how publications offer a home for your work through their supportive communities of passionate readers, writers, and editors. And you’ll hear from Medium Staff in a variety of behind-the-scenes sessions showcasing our tools, case studies, and new releases.

Register now to get updates on confirmed speakers, sessions, and activities. We can’t wait to see you there.

Save the date for Medium Day 2025 was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Plus, our Academics Hour video recording and full transcript

When learning how to do things well, what’s better than listening to someone who has firsthand knowledge? As part of our ongoing series dedicated to our academic and scholarly communities, we asked three experts in scholarly and academic fields to share their experience using Medium and offer their best advice for using the platform.

Below you’ll find a collection of our favorite moments with the panelists, the video recording of our Academics Hour event, a full transcript, and resources for our academic/scholarly communities on Medium.

Top Takeaways

Carin-Isabel Knoop, Rebecca Ruth Gould, PhD, and Enrique Dans shared a wealth of information during our Academics Hour webinar. Although we highly recommend watching or reading the whole thing (see below for recording and transcript), these are some of our favorite moments to inspire your work on Medium.

1. Don’t just republish your reports; tell a story.

Use narrative techniques in your Medium stories to gain new audiences. Example: Instead of just posting your essay/dissertation/research, frame your topic as something that a protagonist of your choosing is struggling with and is trying to solve.

2. Use your Medium stories in the ways you’re already publishing your work.

Think about where you’re already publishing things related to your work in the academic world, and write Medium stories you can link to from those things as references, footnotes, etc.

3. Use story responses to help inform your work.

Sharing early versions of your work on Medium can help you get useful feedback that you can incorporate into your projects before their official publication.

4. Engage with other academics on Medium.

Engage with comments to your Medium stories to find kindred spirits and build authentically reciprocal relationships.

5. Consider broader copyright options to widen access to your work.

Consider what kind of content licensing you are using to a) match any copyright expectations by the original publisher (when in doubt, ask!), and b) consider whether a broader Creative Commons license may better match your goals.

6. If you create a publication on Medium, register an ISSN for it.

If you launch a publication on Medium, consider registering an ISSN for it to create more revenue streams and add broader legitimacy/appeal.

7. Repurpose resources you provide to your students into readable stories.

Reframe your syllabus or list of resources/links into a Medium story, to contextualize sources for your students into a narrative rather than a stagnant document.

8. Don’t think your subject matter is too niche for Medium.

From examinations of 12th century Arabic love poetry to paleontology news to studies on community-centered journalism, our academic and scholarly communities find success with a wide range of topics. Don’t hesitate adding your esoteric point of view to the mix — Medium readers are thankful for your specificity and expertise.

9. If you are in the Partner Program, use Friend Links for wider access.

Use Friend Links to share your stories beyond the paywall.

10. Just publish!

Medium’s mission is to deepen understanding across the world by building community around shared stories. This is only possible by the contributions of our diverse writers sharing their wealth of knowledge and expertise. Don’t hesitate to publish — jump in and learn as you go.

Video Recording

Here’s a video recording of the Academics Hour event, featuring our three panelists.

About our panelists:

Carin-Isabel Knoop
Carin-Isabel Knoop (on Humans in the Digital Era) leads the Harvard Business School’s Case Research & Writing Group, which has supported the development of over 3,000 course materials — primarily field cases — on organizations and managers worldwide. Her extensive exposure to their challenges inspired her to explore ways to support them and those they lead, starting with co-authoring Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace (Springer, 2018) and numerous articles. Beyond her writing, Carin-Isabel is a sought-after speaker on mental health, workplace well-being, and leadership. Her multicultural background informs her mission to create accessible, impactful educational experiences for global audiences.
Listen to Carin-Isabel’s Medium Day talk, “A Teddy Bear and the Art of Indirect Communication”

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans studies the effects of technology innovation on people, companies and society (writing in Spanish at enriquedans.com since 2003). He’s taught Innovation at IE Business School since 1990, and now, is hacking education as Senior Advisor for Digital Transformation at IE University, BSc (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), MBA (Instituto de Empresa) and Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (UCLA).
Listen to Enrique’s Medium Day talk, “How To Succeed as an Academic on Medium”

Rebecca Ruth Gould
Rebecca Ruth Gould, PhD (Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is the editor of the publication Global Literary Theory on Medium. She examines how poetry relates to politics on and off Medium. Her expertise focuses on Middle Eastern literatures, and her most recent books are Erasing Palestine (2023) and The Persian Prison Poem (2021).
Follow her publication: Global Literary Theory
Learn how she registered an ISSN for her Medium publication

Full Transcript

The transcript below was edited for clarity and readability, but please feel free to watch the whole thing on Youtube here.

Scott Lamb: How do you approach writing about academic topics on Medium? What’s your way into using the platform?

Rebecca Ruth Gould: It’s been really an eye-opening and incredibly empowering experience to have the option of sharing my work more broadly. For my scholarly work, I’d say I have developed a little bit of a workflow. For those of us who do write scholarship, peer reviewed scholarship, parts of this process could be kind of a little bit boring, dare I say, and so I always have the Medium article in the back of my mind. Sometimes that means like I’ll even keep two files going at the same time. One is like the main scholarship with all the documentation, but then, when I come across a paragraph that I really love, that just really speaks to my heart and represents what I want to say in a broad way like I put that in the other file, which may become a draft on Medium. And so for me, it does require a little bit of multitasking — I think in advance about pitching what I’m writing to two kinds of audiences.

Enrique Dans: In my case, I teach innovation. When you teach innovation, it is extremely horizontal. It’s all over the place. So choosing your topics is not trivial. I mean, you cannot be an expert in every topic in innovation. It’s completely impossible. If you’re teaching, for instance, MBAs or Masters in Management, you need to entertain a wide array of topics. I realized that blogging or writing an article on Medium was a phenomenal way for me to prepare things to get ready for a class — to learn what’s out there, who’s talking about this or that, and get the comment reactions. When I started writing on Medium, I was teaching and writing in Spanish. For me, Medium was a huge surprise because, when you blog in Spanish and you become one of the top bloggers in technology, you find yourself all of a sudden amassing some audience. So for me, the challenge of writing an article to publish it on Medium forces me to document the article to find interesting links, and also to find these first comments and reactions, which is something that I can expect later on, when I discuss the article in my class.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: I have a very emotional relationship with Medium, because when the pandemic came, I said, “How are we going to manage people? I work at a business school. What’s going to happen to us?” A friend suggested that I start writing. Medium was a form to journal about what is going on in the world, and how it is changing — and my first instinct was: How can I find people who have been through these situations before? So I think one of my early articles on Medium was with somebody who had been in the Armed Forces. And I was like, let’s write about that for managers: How do you navigate without sight? What happens when nothing is as it seems, when there’s a lot of risk and uncertainty? And then from there I was like. Oh, you know, I’ll go and talk to musicians about how they’re handling the pandemic, and so on. So I think one of the beautiful things about Medium is that it’s a place that enables you to have these conversations of a multidisciplinary nature, and to think about with whom you would want to interact in order to write. It’s a platform that enables individuals who can be stuck in one discipline to think broadly about how they bring these voices and people to the conversation.

Scott: That’s really wonderful to hear. I think the piece that stood out from me from what you just said really is about community. When the platform is working as intended, and really in its ideal form, it’s exactly that — it’s not just you’re publishing things into the void, or you’re just seeing stats that people are reading them, but that you actually get engagement. And there’s conversation happening. Carin, I’m curious what best practices of storytelling and research do you bring into your work on medium? It sounds like that’s a big orienting principle for you.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: I come from research. I tell these stories, either through a personal anecdote, or through the story of an individual, but then it is always connected back to research. I see it as an opportunity to combine research with narrative and also come up with, you know, either individuals who move us or like how I’ve written about my parents’ Teddy Bear and how they used it to negotiate conflicts. The theme is really more or less a closing line in order to hang some pieces of research that I think would be helpful to people. And then, my stories also have some questions or frameworks, two or three takeaways that people could then come back and practice — so it’s also very practice oriented, which may reflect my world. I’m a case writer at Harvard Business School, where we bridge management, education, and leadership practice through the writing of case studies which are about decisions that people are making. There’s something that the protagonist is struggling with and is trying to solve.

Enrique Dans: The storytelling part is crucial, that you have to be comfortable with it. If you’re not comfortable, it’s not sustainable. If it takes you a lot of time to come up with the style or structure, etc. It’s not sustainable, so it’s extremely important that you feel comfortable writing. I write articles in a very, very short time. It takes me longer to research the article, or to come up with the idea for the article, than to write it.

Scott: That’s really interesting. I mean, it’s certainly something we see that’s successful on Medium, kind of regardless of topic or genre. And it’s obviously much broader than Medium as well — that storytelling is an essential tactic to get people to follow you, to go on the journey and really deeply understand what it is that you’re talking about. Rebecca, I’m just curious, does that show up in your work as well?

Rebecca Ruth Gould: Yeah, definitely. One point where I want to chime in is to do with the comments that I’ve received (or contributors to my publication have received), because I would compare it to the peer review process. In the academic context, it’s so professionalized, and it’s anonymized by design. You have no way of going back to that person. You have no way of continuing the conversation. While there is obviously a certain value to that — because it avoids conflicts of interest, and it protects a certain rigor from a kind of personal fulfillment perspective — it can be lonely or disorienting. So, Medium really complements that. Some of the comments I’ve received have been just really in depth and extraordinary, even comparable to a peer review. But the big difference is that it’s actually a human being who you’re interacting with. That also enriches the storytelling experience and is really distinctive about writing on Medium for me.

Enrique Dans: I don’t see Medium as an academic journal, but you guys at Medium could organize something like this if you wanted to, and considering how problematic some of the journals are nowadays, with all these issues going on with the prestige of the journals. It could be a very interesting initiative. But I see it more like if I publish something academic or for a journey, then I use Medium to explain it, to collaborate to get insights about it. It’s more like another channel for my research, with different characteristics.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: Just picking up on Rebecca point — the other extreme is that you can also share on platforms like Linkedin. But then in Linkedin, you get all caught up with the posturing that occurs because it’s a professional platform, and people are trying to sell themselves. They’re usually under their real names. And so some of the great interactions and people that I’ve wound up collaborating with have been [under a username like] “happy_surfer” — and then you realize, you know, it’s the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. So I’ve loved that — [Medium is] one of these very rare marketplaces of ideas and emotions where people are there from all over the world, all over the classes, and are not trying to present as something. It feels much less transactional in a way, which I think is really very productive for academics.

Enrique Dans: And it’s not any place I mean, it’s a place with a certain prestige. Many politicians or big, prominent figures have been writing on Medium. So you get some sort of academic authority. When you write on Medium, you are able to get a dialogue going on, etc. Then this idea of being more visible allows you to — I don’t know, if you want to call a company and say, “Hey, I’m this guy, I teach here, I’ve been writing on Medium. You can see some examples of my research. Would you open the doors if I want data for my research?” And that’s interesting. It opens a lot of doors in that regard.

Scott Lamb: I feel like there’s a thread here of the value that the three of you find in the feedback loop that Medium provides. It’s different, obviously, than academic journals, that is also different from other forms of social media. There’s just a different type of conversation that can help drive your thinking forward or open up new areas of discussion. I think maybe on that point, Rebecca, I had a question for you about how you use medium as part of your research projects. I think you have a very particular approach there.

Rebecca Ruth Gould: Yeah, I think it was a bit serendipitous as well. So I have a big project that is also the name of the journal I edit on Medium called Global Literary Theory. And it did begin as literally just a research project funded by the European Commission (ERC). By its design, it was an international project, with 20 or 30 people, representing from 20 to 30 countries, writing very specialized academic work. I was already writing and publishing my stuff on Medium separately, and I realized it’s worth trying to put some of the materials that we’re producing as a research team onto Medium. And one thing that surprised me — at first, it was kind of just for ourselves, to just have it out there. But suddenly, people started commenting. Even if the subjects of what was being published were pretty niche. It found an audience, remarkably — like we publish a lot to do with, say Pakistani poetry, or Indian literature, or things that might in the English speaking world seem very niche. But they’re actually not that niche within the cultures that are being written about. It found an audience, and it gradually began to grow. And then the project itself ended and I began opening it up to contributors on Medium. Now, we have a very nice interface between people from my research team and then people who are already organically on Medium. I think the quality of comments and engagement is pretty high. I was actually a little bit surprised to see that people can find relevance in learning about, I don’t know, 12th century Arabic love poetry, for example. It’s not irrelevant for them.

Scott Lamb: Well, I feel like that touches back a little bit on the storytelling as well. I feel like you’ve managed to really effectively connect some of these topics to broader parts of people’s lives which is really essential.

Rebecca Ruth Gould: Another thing I did that transitioned Global Literary Theory beyond a research project was applying for an ISSN. It’s not something that is widely discussed, but it’s worth knowing that if you have a publication on Medium. Similarly, it’s like a book. A book has an ISBN and an ISSN is what is the equivalent for a journal. As long as it has contributors and is regularly updated, it’s eligible. To get that, you have to go to your national library. So that would be the Library of Congress, or, in my case, the British Library. It’s different for every country. But basically, it means that it can potentially be an additional source of income for contributors, because when something’s published with an ISSN, they have reproduction rights. It’s a way of adding value for contributors.

Scott Lamb: I’m so glad you brought that up. I wanted to ask you about that. The value that conveys to contributors is like an extra sense of authority and recognition. Is that why it’s worth kind of jumping through those very small hoops to do that?

Rebecca Ruth Gould: Once you get the ISSN, it’s then registered on the library’s website like it’s in their catalog. So yes, it has this kind of recognition. It’s treated as something that has a long term value.

Scott Lamb: Fantastic. Well, we’ll include your article in the resources that we’ll send out. You sort of opened our eyes to this. I think it’s a thing that we’re thinking about as well. How can we help support that process, or at least provide resources for people who are curious to go that route to do that work. Enrique, I wanted to come back to an earlier topic. It’s been threaded throughout, but I’m curious to just hear you talk a little bit more about your approach to using Medium in the classroom, as a way to connect and interact with your students and lead classes.

Enrique Dans: I teach in a business school so most things are case or case-based or case-oriented. I don’t know if I can talk about this in front of Carin. I mean, she’s the goddess of case studies. But I realize my problem with Harvard cases (and I’ve been educated at Harvard to use Harvard cases myself, so I love the material) is that it’s very difficult for me to put my hands on a case that is less than, say, 6 months old. I teach innovation. My students love to discuss things in class that are happening right now. So when I write, I think about some of the articles as “mini-cases” — I know it’s not a case; a case takes much more work. I put lots of links, so it takes longer to read the links than to read my article. And what I tell my students is don’t worry about my article. My article could be my opinion; my position on that is not important. What I want you to read is the links. I also use the links as my personal file. When you read one of my articles on Medium, it has way more links than the average. This is because I’m intending to get my students familiar with my sources. They come from very different backgrounds, but now they are in business technology innovation class. They need to read these to gain a lot of familiarity with the types of sources that you need to use when you discuss something in a business setting. So what I try to do is to build this type of archive for me and resources for them, and of course, when I publish it, I give them the Friend Link. My articles are typically closed — you have to be a subscriber if you want to read them. But with my students, and when I share them on social media I use the Friend Link. I think I am overusing the Friend Link a little bit. If I wanted to share the link that forces people to subscribe, I could be making more money. But that’s not my point — my point here is to get my articles distributed, so I tend to abuse the friend link in that regard, to be able to make them accessible to more people.

Scott Lamb: Totally understood. It’s part of the reason that Friend Links exist. We know there are a lot of use cases where people do want to paywall a story, but also have an avenue to get it to people without the paywall. It’s a perfect use of that, Enrique. I appreciate it. Well, I think we’ve got time for maybe one more group question from me, and then we’ll start heading toward the Q&A from the audience. I think you’ve all given so much advice and insight on the call today but I’m curious to end on this note of one specific piece of advice you might give to an academic writer on Medium and Carin, let’s start with you.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: So maybe my advice echoes some of what Enrique is saying about his process. I’m a professional writer — it’s a passion for me. It’s very difficult to write, it takes me a month to write them. There’s a lot of tinkering. So my one piece of advice is, don’t think that you need to write at a particular speed. Don’t think that you need to sound a particular way. I would say, resist the urge of using Gen AI because it really doesn’t build this emotional resonance. Combine your work with research to get some credibility. But I think my piece of advice is to get going. Don’t overthink it. Don’t get too stuck in your links. If one person reads your research and it changes their lives, that’s a tremendous impact. So I would encourage many of you on the call to get going. We want to hear from you, and the more diverse this marketplace of ideas is, the better off we all collectively are.

Enrique Dans: You mentioned Generative AI. Of course, if you are going to write on Medium it is because you like writing — that doesn’t make any sense to me to subcontract writing if you love writing, it doesn’t make any sense to ask an algorithm to write it for you. However, I found a very interesting use for generative AI. You’re probably familiar with NotebookLM from Google. One of the possibilities it offers you is to create a podcast — you feed it with an article, and it creates a podcast for you with two hosts, artificial hosts who are always the same, that engage in a discussion. The discussion is extremely well done. What I found was that if I feed NotebookLM with my own article, the one I wrote, and then with the sources, one by one, the podcast that was created was very interesting, very insightful, and well done. Creating a podcast with this tool and publishing it under my main article on Medium allows many of my students to choose the listening way — not just to the article being read aloud, because Medium already allows you to do that, but a podcast with two hosts and all that. I publish my podcast all over the place — Spotify, Amazon, Apple — I call it “Enrique Dans for Dummies.” Many of my students actually love it.

Scott Lamb: That is fascinating. I feel like I maybe want to have a little generative AI jog before we come back to the actual last question. But I’m curious how generative AI is maybe showing up for all of you. This is a super interesting use case, Enrique and I used Google Notebook LM recently for a research project and was kind of blown away by how good that podcast feature was. But, Rebecca, is there something in the generative AI space that is relevant for you?

Rebecca Ruth Gould: Very intrigued. But no, not none of that.

Scott Lamb: Carin, what about you? I’m curious. If it’s showing up in your work. It’s one of the biggest topics right now on Medium and kind of in the world, and I’m sure that there’s some impact in various ways across your space as well.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: Sure. I mean one of the things that we found helpful at the school is to use it as an alternative persona. One great challenge in order to get your research out is that you may not know how somebody might react to it. So, for example, if I were writing a case on a ballerina, I might put in: “If I were a ballerina, what would I worry about when a new creative director comes in?” I think it’s a useful tool in order to share perspectives that I might have missed. Or you can put your writing in and say, “Is this accessible? Are there a couple of sentences that are really inaccessible? Are there a few terms that I should be defining?” So I think, as an intelligent editor, as a smarter friend, it’s okay. I think if you outsource it, it really does feel very impersonal to me. And the other thing is that if we’re all using it, we will all flood the air. It’s a little bit like entrepreneurship — it’s lowering the barriers so nobody will be reading anything. And then everybody will be putting everybody else’s pieces into Gen AI in order to generate comments, and then you really are in a dystopian kind of philosophy. So I think the more human we can try to stay, the better. Maybe the better off we will be. But it could be naive and old school.

Enrique Dans: The important part is to be transparent. At the end of my article I put this: If podcasting is your thing, here is this AI generated podcast. I also tell them that my article is not. My article is from my own brain and hands on the keyboard, and all that, so they understand they are not talking to a bot. They are talking to a person.

Scott Lamb: I could go off for another 30 minutes on Gen. AI. Certainly for a platform like Medium, we see both the advantages of certain use cases and the disadvantages of others. And we’re very invested in making sure that the exchange of ideas that’s happening on the platform itself is about human writing, interacting with other human folks. It’s very odd that here we are in 2025, and that that’s a stance that a platform has to make. Anyway, we’re all kind of in that soup at the moment together. I want to come back to the advice question and, Enrique, toss it to you.

Enrique Dans: My advice for people who think about Medium in an academic setting is to first of all, try to provide as many links as you can. As I said before, the more links the better because they give people references to what you’ve been reading in order to write what you wrote. It’s a little bit of a paradox. What you’re actually telling people is: Go away. Yes, read me, but the best thing you can do besides reading me is click here and find out what drove me into writing this. The more you invite people to go away and read other things, the more they will consider you a reference, and the more they will come back. So, using links and abusing links give people the extra layer of information to just click and understand what I’m talking about. The other piece of advice is to be generous and share. I mean, I write all my articles with Creative Commons. I don’t use copyright — I use copyleft, which means everyone can use my articles, recycle them if you want. I use the less restrictive version of the Creative Commons license, which is “CC BY.” Why? Because I want my ideas to move around, to be shared, etc. The less restrictive I am, I find that the easier it is to circulate them and talk about them, etc. I’ve always been a fan of copyleft in academic environments, but on Medium I found it when, at the beginning, you guys started to offer the possibility to label your articles as Creative Commons.

Scott Lamb: It’s fascinating. It’s built in at the story level. You can choose it as an author in your settings. It’s part of the way that we approach rights on Medium, to put as much control into the hands of the authors as possible. So it’s really interesting to hear that, Enrique. Well, Rebecca, I’m curious for your words of advice for folks getting started on Medium.

Rebecca Ruth Gould: With respect to the subject of advice for people trying to figure out what they write and how they start, I would say: Go back to the beginning of yourself. For everyone who is in any way aligned with academia, one thing that defines us is that we obviously have been through the educational system. We have papers, theses, a lot of stuff that may or may not be published. For me, one of the most groundbreaking experiences was to go back through my previous work… and reshape it for a Medium audience. It literally gave a second life to something that was kind of dead. But now it’s alive. And that’s an amazing transformative experience. The advantage of going back to the beginning of yourself as a scholar is — that’s the moment when you first fell in love with reading, or whatever it is that you do, and that kind of love is exactly what I think readers are looking for. So, by connecting with that part of yourself, I think that’s the best way to position your work for a Medium audience. I would also say, never underestimate what’s relevant for a Medium audience, because I’ve really been astonished. As long as it doesn’t contain jargon that we don’t need, I think no idea is too challenging for a Medium audience. They are a pretty smart group of people who are willing to take the time and give really constructive feedback as well. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of the Medium community.

Scott Lamb: That’s fantastic advice. Thank you so much.

Enrique Dans: The other thing is that it gives people an additional dimension, particularly your students. My obsession when I discuss something in a class is to take the issue out of the class and get them to imagine what they would do in a real setting. If they were making a real decision in a real company, and all that. So that’s why bringing all this external information is important for them. But also it’s interesting as a professor, when [students] realize that the thing that you are discussing with them has been published somewhere else and has been exposed to other people. It gives you authority and improves the way they see you. It’s like, “Okay, this guy is relevant for me because he’s my teacher. He’s going to grade me and all that. But besides being here in this class, he also writes for a wider audience. He gets comments from people all over the world.” This brings the relevance to a different place for them. They realize that what they are discussing is for real.

Scott Lamb: Well, I want to transition over to some of the questions that we’ve been getting from the audience and invite a few people up to ask them again. Here’s one that’s related to the idea of expanding one’s audience, from Shara Benison. Shara, do you want to come up and ask your question?

Shara Benison: Sure. Hi, everybody! My question was really around amplification and getting more eyeballs on the content that’s published on Medium. Does anyone have tips for building their reader audience on Medium or expanding readership of their pieces once they’re posted? Separately, does Medium have any insight on how they choose which stories are included in the daily Medium Newsletter?

Enrique Dans: For the first part, what I can tell you is: Be patient. You don’t build an audience overnight. It takes a while, it goes article by article. Some articles achieve more popularity, and some of the people stay with you and stick to your publication. The other thing is Boost. Sometimes you get touched by the magic wand — you get your article Boosted and it does make a significant difference. And then you realize that every time you get Boosted, you get an inflow of people — some of them decide to stick to your publication. But be patient at the beginning. It feels like you’re just being read by yourself, by your mom, and no one else — but it builds up. Trust me, it does.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: I share on Linkedin, which you know is a professional platform that I use because I write for managers and human sustainability. It’s a good place to get a different kind of feedback. I’m not big on X, but I do share there. Recently, I dug out my Facebook account to share there also. Think about different places you’re already there, and then share. Engaging with the comments is good for building readership. People take the time to comment — I try to really take the time to respond. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. And then also support other people on Medium, and they’ll support you back. I think there’s a fair bit of reciprocity. Enrique talked about sourcing. So when I write other pieces for other publications, I will refer to my Medium piece as a source. That’s another way — if you’re published in other places, you can certainly draw some attention that way.

Enrique Dans: Also, when you answer comments, it’s important to clap for the comment that you’re answering, because that makes the comment visible underneath your article. People like that a lot, if you are taking the job to answer and reply to the comment and all that makes it visible. I think it’s also important.

Rebecca Ruth Gould: I could speak to the question of readers. I resonate with what Enrique said about just waiting. Sometimes it might even take months to get really good comments. But it’s worth the wait. The great thing is that at Medium you can put your work out there and then just move on. And then suddenly, you get this great surprise. It’s like a letter from someone you know, a good friend out of the blue a few months later. So, it’s really worthwhile. Speaking of something I saw in the chat, someone was asking about DOI — having a digital identifier for what you publish on Medium. The best way to think of Medium is like it is part of a broader ecosystem. Yes, you publish your work on the Medium platform, but then that thing you have published can have a life in other contexts. And so you can get a DOI — what I would do in that case is just take a PDF of that publication on Medium, and you upload it to a platform that does provide DOIs. This is like a permanent link. There are many, many free, scholarly platforms. I think every discipline has their own. I think it’s good to think of Medium as interacting with other platforms that broaden the reach of what you’ve published. It’s not an isolated thing that exists apart from everything else. It’s something that interacts with other ways in which our work is read in the world.

Enrique Dans: I totally agree with Carin that it’s important to share it on social media and all that. I do it systematically as soon as I finish writing, the first thing I do is to publish it on X on Linkedin — now I’m also using Blue Sky. And Facebook, I don’t use anymore but I still have some 30,000 people following me there. So I publish it there just in case. I think it’s the only moment during the day when I enter Facebook, just to share my article and then go away.

Scott Lamb: That complementary nature is very much what Medium is building towards. I think Linkedin has come up a couple of times on the call. And like, that’s a very specific network, you want to use that. I think a lot of the most successful writers that we see on Medium from the academic world, and just really more broadly, do have that approach of thinking about a whole ecosystem. That can take some time. I don’t say that in a flippant way. Time and energy need to go into that kind of work. I do think that a lot of the platforms have started to make it easier. We’re constantly looking for ways to make it easier to share from Medium out to those others. But we have a number of people who have a Substack, and also publish some of their stories on Medium, and they look at them just as different tools to achieve different ends. And that, I think, is a really effective strategy.

Scott Lamb: I will touch really quickly on the Medium Newsletter question. So, for folks who don’t know, we have a daily newsletter called the Medium Newsletter (a very clever branding strategy on our part) and really it’s meant to be a glance of the best stories that are happening on Medium at any given day. Of course, there are tens of thousands of stories that are published on Medium every day, so what we’re really looking for is what we call internally “the Medium Version” of a story — a story that you wouldn’t see in traditional media, and that could be relevant to what’s happening in the news. We have a number of obsessions that we have in the Newsletter, often around getting better at work, around self-improvement, around some of the big topics of the day like AI. And so we’re looking for moments where we can connect the writing and the writers on the platform with the big topics that people are curious about in the world. It’s one of many channels, many ways that we reach the readership on Medium.

Scott Lamb: Now we have a question here from Jules Boyle. Jules, if you’re there, you want to jump on and ask your question.

Jules Boyle: I’m interested in Medium for science communication, but also, I am very early on in my research career. I’m currently interviewing for PhD programs. How would you recommend someone in that stage to approach writing on Medium?

Enrique Dans: We consider ourselves a research university at IE University. We publish a lot of research, have a lot of research faculty members, etc. But we also strive to have people who can teach well and explain the relevance of their research to a wider audience. So when you find a Phd candidate or a teaching candidate in a certain area, and that person writes on Medium, it provides you with an additional dimension that will look very well. It makes a very nice addition to their application.

Rebecca Ruth Gould: I would say that also make sure that you are publishing the peer review stuff. In my experience, it’s easier to draw from things I’ve already published that have been peer reviewed, so that’s taken care of. And there’s no competition between the two, so I would make sure that both are being taken care of, especially if you’re interviewing for jobs.

Carin-Isabel Knoop: I want to go back to first principles, like what is on my resume? What have I done? And maybe for you this is a way to think about who you are. What is it that you’re passionate about? How do you present yourself? What is your relationship to science? So Enrique focuses on sort of the way that’s going to look to the world. But maybe Medium is a way for you to look into your own world as you embark on your career.

Scott Lamb: I think we’re at time. I could talk for another few hours with each of you. Thank you to the audience for sending questions in and being so engaged, and thank you so much to our panelists for taking time out of your busy day to join us and share your insights. Really, really grateful for having you here.

More resources for academics, scholars, and students

Join our next event:

On February 21, 2025, we’re going to be doing a follow up event to this one — open office hours for academics, scholars, and students on Medium focused on publishing your work with us. Register now to learn more and get updates!

Guides to writing and publishing:

Get the basics of publishing on Medium (& beyond!) with these essential guides:

An introduction to academic writing on Medium
How academics use Medium to share research and ideas easily, connect with non-academic readers, run courses, and more

How to publish your academic writing on Medium
Reach a wider, non-academic audience on Medium by adapting your thesis, dissertation, or research paper

How to turn your Threads, Bluesky, or X thread into a Medium story
Expand your sentence-long story into the Medium version

How to Get Started in Science Communication: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Tips to kickstart your science communication journey

Recommended reading:

Story examples from folks in academic, scholarly, or scholastic fields to inspire you:

• Challenging Conventional Notions of Affirmative Action & Blackness — Kamilah Moore
• I’m a Public Health Scientist. Here’s What Research Really Shows About Raw Milk. — Dr. Jess Steier
• How I Stay Organized as a Professor — Giordano Mazza, PhD
• “Civil Rights Memoir” Syllabus — Matthew Teutsch
• This Annotation Will Teach You to Read Like a Writer! — Aimee Liu
• Top7, The First Protein Designed from Scratch: The Science Behind the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — Kevin Blake, PhD

Contact us:

Do you have questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to introduce yourself as someone in an academic, scholarly, or scholastic field?

• Email us at academics@medium.com anytime.
• Or, post your question as a response to this story!

Three academic and scholarly experts share their top Medium tips was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We all cope with trauma in different ways. During the pandemic, I turned to horror movies.

I’m sure I am not alone, and I’m sure there are many great thinkpieces on the philosophical rationale of it (please comment with links if you know of any on Medium!) but for me, I appreciated the distraction of imaginary stories that seemed worse than the literal nightmare that was playing out in reality.

I embraced all that I could find on all streaming services. New releases, old classics, everything was fair game — reviews be damned. I even briefly subscribed to Shudder, but decided maybe that was a bit much.

This is all to say that I have a good amount of contextual awareness when it comes to the grand variety of nuance within the genre. And although I enjoy horror films that feature a literal threat — an alien, a witch, a Thing — the ones that blend an external adversary with an existential crisis are my favorites. When boogiemen aren’t just running around the neighborhood wielding knives, but whispering to us at the edges of our inner consciousness, convincing us away from our moral compass or practiced conscience. When maybe the bad guy is actually… us.

If you feel similarly, boy, are you going to love Smile.

(I was able to catch an early screening of the film through my Regal Unlimited™ Movie Subscription Pass. Smile opens only in theaters on Sept. 30, 2022.)

The gist of the story — and forgive me for my painfully vague spoiler-free efforts — is this: an overworked mental health therapist witnesses a traumatic event which, combined with her unresolved grief from childhood, causes her to hallucinate disturbing smiles that creep across familiar faces. She believes this delusion is due to an unfathomable and malicious presence within her, which also makes her perpetuate traumatic actions. Her personal relationships, hopes, and dreams become strained, then destroyed.

I knew going into it that it wouldn’t just be about some curse or haunting. Contemporary offerings like Haunting of Hill House/Blythe Manor, Get Out, Night House, Hereditary, and Midsommar are all about much more than meets the eye. But I wasn’t counting on a film with a national, mainstream, and probably very expensive marketing campaign to dive deep into the nuances of generational trauma, substance abuse, and attachment theory.

Refreshingly, this film doesn’t take itself too seriously until it earns it. The initial jump scares are satisfying and absurd — I am not ashamed to admit that I screamed at one point, and then laughed at myself along with those chuckling near me — and some of the dialogue is literal camp. You will also recognize tasteful and loving homages to Psycho and The Shining, and it also features a (very literal) reference to classic Italian horror. None of it comes across as hackneyed.

In fact, the only thing that gets a little on-the-nose is the trauma connection. It is revealed pretty quickly that her untreated childhood trauma is at least part of what’s going on. But just as it gets so heavy handed that you want to shout We get it! …some really nuanced scenes unfold and unexpected turns take place. One in particular has to do with the therapist revisiting a particularly vulnerable patient and, in a few quick strokes, displays the depths of the human condition of grief, of how it can drive any of us to be capable of acts both deeply empathetic and despicable.

I will forgive the nepotism of casting Sosie Bacon (if that last name sounds familiar, you’re correct) because her acting is impeccable. I enjoyed her in Mare of Easttown, but in Smile, she is able to really stretch her range. Anyone who knows a therapist, social worker, or other health care professional will see familiar traits masterfully displayed — a particular clench of the jaw, a deadness of the eyes, the ruined cuticles. But she is also up for the challenge of earnestly, yet pathetically, calling out for and crying over a cat named ‘Mustache.’ It’s a real high-low treat of a performance.

(Side note: During a pandemic horror movie marathon, I watched Sosie’s father in The Darkness and, let’s just say, it’s quite a far fall from his iconic role in Friday The 13th. But I am glad Sosie is taking up the torch.)

The ending may be controversial — and not just for the gore. Yes, if you are sensitive to body horror, beware! But it, too, could be considered yet another fascinating homage, a blend of Evil Dead and Begotten, if you can believe it! (Not familiar with Begotten? Here is a link for more details but only click if you feel psychologically safe — it’s pretty gruesome.)

When my partner and I left the theater, we had two completely different opinions about its conclusion. But whether it was a trite ploy for a sequel, or a devastating metaphor for the reality of cycles of abuse, it made for great and revealing conversations about our different perspectives on redemption and healing.

You must not miss out on Smile. It’s much more than just horror. It explores many trauma themes that I may expound upon in another post (which, unlike this one, would need to be filled with spoilers). If you see it, tell me what you think about it in the comments!