Publishing platform Medium says it’s sticking with DEI

Publishing platform Medium says it’s still committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even as many other U.S. tech companies have scaled back their efforts in this space to appease the Trump administration. In a blog post published on Monday, Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine backed the company’s diverse community, saying that businesses shouldn’t have to choose between inclusion and profit.

Plus, more people value “understanding and respect over hate and division,” the CEO noted, explaining that culture wars and yelling at others isn’t an effective way to change minds.

As a publishing platform, Stubblebine says Medium benefits from diverse voices and that people who come to the site to expand their understanding of the world see diversity as a strength, not a threat.

“To understand the full context of a situation, you need to hear from someone with a different life experience from your own,” the executive wrote. “Perspectives of people from marginalized communities are essential viewpoints that deserve to be heard.”

He also argued that diversity is a competitive advantage.

“As a CEO, I feel confident that embracing diversity as a strategy increases the business, cultural, and intellectual capabilities of our company,” he wrote.

In addition, the company’s policies focus on building a civil platform for readers and writers, where “hateful content, threats of violence, harassment, racial slurs, promotion of pseudoscience or disinformation, harmful stereotypes, intentional misgendering of individuals, and other threats” to the community are not tolerated.

This stands in contrast to the policies that guide Medium’s competitor Substack, which takes a more “free speech” approach to moderating content. This, in turn, allowed white nationalists to find a place on Substack, leading to user backlash.

Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie has even gone on record to say that the company didn’t believe that “censorship” measures, including demonetizing blogs, would help the problem go away.

Medium is taking a different approach. And, at a time when maintaining DEI policies has become politicized, it’s a stand that only a handful of companies have been willing to take.

Across the U.S., major corporations like McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson, Booz Allen, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, Molson Coors, Walmart, and Target, among others, have rolled back DEI policies. Apple, Delta, Costco, JPMorgan, and McKinsey, meanwhile, said they would remain committed to diversity efforts.

Medium was founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and Stubblebine took over the CEO role in July 2022, as Williams transitioned to becoming chairman of the board. The company today claims to have over a million members (paid subscribers), and reaches 100 million people, including both readers and writers, every month. The company reported its first profitable month last summer. But as a private company, it doesn’t report earnings.