Last year, I wrote a pretty controversial piece about Matter, a long-form science journalism web site with little inkling of a business model that managed to raise $140,000 on Kickstarter from 2,566 people who apparently have far bigger hearts and more optimism about the future of journalism than I do. But sorry folks, you’ve been used and abused.
What did the Kickstarter backers get? Erm. Nothing really, other than a handful of “free” articles, some of which were later distributed for free on the platform. Yes, Matter now has some inkling of a business model, but it’s clearly not one that really works well.
The founders of Matter have now sold the magazine, but why they’ve “sold” to online publisher Medium is bonkers, given that Medium seems to have no intention to be a platform for paid for professional content. That’s not what Matter promised its backers. Let’s face it: Medium founder Ev Williams does great work, but not in the high-quality, professional media space.
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