How Medium is breaking Washington's op-ed habit

[Commentary] Medium, the three-year-old online publishing platform run by one of the founders of Twitter, has spent much of its infancy assiduously courting members of the political class. The pitch is clear: Get your message out with none of the editorial interference that comes with old-school media. The effort has paid off.

Hillary Clinton, under fire for not taking a stand on the Keystone XL pipeline, turned to Medium in September when she decided to come out against the project. Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), on the verge of fulfilling a lifelong dream of meeting the pope, posted a chatty preview of the visit on Medium. And Mitt Romney, with the GOP field on tenterhooks, announced on Medium that he would be sitting out the 2016 presidential race. But while a growing legion of Washington power brokers is sold, there’s an uneasiness taking shape among some in the press. The Knight Foundation earlier in Dec awarded a $140,000 grant to PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning website run by the Tampa Bay Times, to fact check the growing number of claims politicians are making on Medium. But the pushback only captures some of what makes Medium so appealing in the first-place – it’s an end-run around the media. In a sign of how much Medium is banking on Washington’s frustration with traditional news outlets, the San Francisco (CA)-based company established a DC office last spring and has spent months recruiting new voices in Washington.