Out with the old, in with the robots.
My time writing for NewsBreak is now over. The upstart news app used writers like me to get their bandwagon going, and now it has discarded us after becoming respectable in the realm of news.
I can’t blame them when it comes to me, as I’ve been writing opinion pieces exclusively for the last year. I started out writing local news articles about Oregon, but changed my strategy because of time constraints.
I would take news articles from Oregon and rewrite them basically; not with AI, just with my noggin. Some did well, others were stalled by their algorithm. I could never tell if an article would do well or not.
All in all, I made more money with NB than any other writing effort online besides copywriting. This brings me a lot of satisfaction with my time there, but sadly, it has come to an end.
Recently, they sent me an email explaining they are going to make all the contributors reapply to be a contributor, as their strategy has changed; something like that. Well, I knew the writing was on the wall; this meant they were going to filter out all the less desirable.
What surprised me is when they allowed me to write opinion pieces around a year ago. I would just take the articles written for Medium or Substack and put “Opinion” in the title, and NB would publish them. Some of them actually made some decent money too, even over a hundred dollars sometimes — most just languished in obscurity, stalled by their mysterious algorithm or robot editor.
I started writing for NB on Christmas in 2022. So, it’s been about 2.5 years of writing. I accumulated 3,847 followers, 16.4 million impressions from about 200 articles (estimated). I can’t log in anymore, so I don’t remember how many articles I published there, but you can still find my profile and articles on the app, which is strange.
They will probably purge all proof I ever wrote for them eventually. That is how things work with the impersonal internet world. Here today, gone tomorrow, always moving on to the technology wonderland future. Out with the old, in with the new AI robot writers.
Just to be clear, I’ve never used AI for any writing or ideas, I’ve never used it at all and never will, any more than the internet being AI itself. I’m old school, just using the things floating around in my head for my writings.
I’m still here at Medium, but it feels like it is dying too. I haven’t even made one penny this month, which is halfway over. I haven’t been writing or doing much here otherwise, yet still have a couple hundred views — no pennies though.
Things change, maybe Medium will one day purge those who helped build it as well? Soon enough, it will just be AI robots writing everything and those “humans” who sound like them.
Maybe not. Either way, I’ll just keep doing the real thing, cause I like to write, that is the whole thing that makes someone a writer by the way.
I can’t blame them when it comes to me, as I’ve been writing opinion pieces exclusively for the last year. I started out writing local news articles about Oregon, but changed my strategy because of time constraints.
I would take news articles from Oregon and rewrite them basically; not with AI, just with my noggin. Some did well, others were stalled by their algorithm. I could never tell if an article would do well or not.
All in all, I made more money with NB than any other writing effort online besides copywriting. This brings me a lot of satisfaction with my time there, but sadly, it has come to an end.
Recently, they sent me an email explaining they are going to make all the contributors reapply to be a contributor, as their strategy has changed; something like that. Well, I knew the writing was on the wall; this meant they were going to filter out all the less desirable.
What surprised me is when they allowed me to write opinion pieces around a year ago. I would just take the articles written for Medium or Substack and put “Opinion” in the title, and NB would publish them. Some of them actually made some decent money too, even over a hundred dollars sometimes — most just languished in obscurity, stalled by their mysterious algorithm or robot editor.
I started writing for NB on Christmas in 2022. So, it’s been about 2.5 years of writing. I accumulated 3,847 followers, 16.4 million impressions from about 200 articles (estimated). I can’t log in anymore, so I don’t remember how many articles I published there, but you can still find my profile and articles on the app, which is strange.
They will probably purge all proof I ever wrote for them eventually. That is how things work with the impersonal internet world. Here today, gone tomorrow, always moving on to the technology wonderland future. Out with the old, in with the new AI robot writers.
Just to be clear, I’ve never used AI for any writing or ideas, I’ve never used it at all and never will, any more than the internet being AI itself. I’m old school, just using the things floating around in my head for my writings.
I’m still here at Medium, but it feels like it is dying too. I haven’t even made one penny this month, which is halfway over. I haven’t been writing or doing much here otherwise, yet still have a couple hundred views — no pennies though.
Things change, maybe Medium will one day purge those who helped build it as well? Soon enough, it will just be AI robots writing everything and those “humans” who sound like them.
Maybe not. Either way, I’ll just keep doing the real thing, cause I like to write, that is the whole thing that makes someone a writer by the way.
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