Thank you, Elizabeth, for your well-crafted and thoughtful reply. The Creative Exchange may not be for me — I am not here for the money and I don’t write promotional copy for brands — but I still think it’s a great idea. This is mostly because I think it will help better the quality of the writing of those 1% writers who benefit from it. Those articles appearing in our feeds will surely get better and, as a reader, I truly appreciate this.

Sadly, the Creative Exchange will do nothing to surface quality content from the Deep Medium (love that term!), but, as you pointed out, that is a totally separate issue. I remain somewhat confident that Medium will someday figure out how to provide discoverability for readers to explore the Deep Medium. Medium has responded quite well to member issues so far so I’m sure the discoverability issue will eventually be solved.

As a reader, I know that to find the true gems one must dive deep into the Deep Medium. It may be tedious and time-consuming but I have slowly learned how to do the deep diving. Newbies to Medium, however, don’t know this and, for them, what appears in the feeds seems to be all that Medium has to offer. All the good stuff in the Deep Medium remains hidden (and hard to find among all the gunk of the Deep Medium). It’s a difficult problem for Medium and unfortunately I have no sensational solution. If all the Medium staffers are as intelligent as you, Elizabeth, I’m sure something will eventually be figured out that is far better than anything I could possibly suggest. So keep on keeping on. You’re doing a great job!