For Medium Writers
Medium can bury your article.
Without telling you.
There's a distribution tier on Medium called Network Only. If your article gets moved there, it disappears from reader feeds, stops getting discovered, and your earnings quietly collapse — all while you're left in the dark. Checking the tag feed for every article, every day to see if your pieces are still being distributed is tedious work. Story Canary does it automatically and emails you the moment something changes.
Get Started — $7/month
How Medium's distribution actually works
Most writers don't know this exists.
Every article published on Medium is assigned a distribution category. This isn't publicly advertised in any obvious way — Medium's Help documentation touches on it, but most writers never read it. Here's what you need to know:
✦ Boosted Distribution
Medium's curators actively promote your article. It gets placed in front of readers beyond your followers. This is the best outcome.
◎ General Distribution
The default for newly published articles. Your piece can appear in reader home feeds, tag pages, and topic feeds. This is where you want to be.
✕ Network Only Distribution
Your article is effectively buried. It disappears from tag feeds and reader home pages. Only your direct followers can see it. Partner Program earnings drop to nearly zero.
⟳ The Catch
Moving between categories is a manual decision made by Medium's curation team — and they don't notify you when it happens. You find out by noticing, if you notice at all.
Medium's curation team doesn't review every article. They tend to review pieces that are gaining traction — articles picking up reads, shares, and engagement. Which means the articles most at risk of being quietly downgraded are often your best-performing ones, at the exact moment they're starting to work.
The only reliable way to know if your article has been moved is to check whether it still appears in its tag feed. An article in General Distribution will show up there. An article that's been moved to Network Only won't. Doing this manually — for every article, every day — is tedious and most writers simply don't. That's exactly the gap Story Canary fills.
Sound familiar?
You've probably felt this without knowing why.
You publish a piece. The first few days feel promising — views climb, reads are solid, a few people share it. Then, almost overnight, everything stops. The views flatline. You tell yourself it just ran its course, that's how Medium works sometimes. You move on to your next article. Weeks later, you check back on that piece. Almost nothing. You never find out what happened.
This is one of the most common experiences Medium writers describe — and Network Only Distribution is often the reason. An article quietly moved by a curator two weeks after publication. No email. No notification. No explanation. Just silence.
If you're in Medium's Partner Program, this hits your earnings directly. General Distribution is what puts your article in front of new readers. New readers generate reading time. Reading time generates income. Remove General Distribution and you've removed the engine.
Even if you write purely for reach rather than income, the math is the same. Network Only means your article is only visible to people already following you — not the strangers who would have found you through a tag or a feed.
What Story Canary does
The alert Medium should send you — but doesn't.
Story Canary monitors your articles every day by checking whether they appear in Medium's tag feeds. The moment one of your articles disappears from its tag feed, Story Canary sends you an email alert. You'll know within 24 hours — often the same day — rather than weeks later when it's too late to respond effectively.
What you do with that information is up to you. You can use it to understand which topics or angles Medium's curators are scrutinizing, adjust your approach on future pieces, or simply stop being the last to know about your own work.
One setup. Then silence — until there's something you actually need to know.
How it works
Set it up once. It runs quietly in the background.
Connect Your Account
Enter your Medium username. Story Canary pulls in your recent articles automatically — no manual entry required for new pieces.
Choose a Tag to Watch
For each article, select the tag whose feed Story Canary should monitor. A niche tag works better than a broad one — smaller feed, faster results.
Daily Monitoring
Every day, Story Canary checks Medium's tag feed for each of your articles. If it's still showing up, all is well. If it disappears, something has changed.
Immediate Email Alert
The moment an article stops appearing in its tag feed, you get an email. No dashboard to remember to check — just a direct alert when it matters.
Pricing
Simple, honest pricing.
One plan. Everything included. Cancel anytime.
- Unlimited article monitoring
- Daily automated tag feed scans
- Instant email alerts
- Full dashboard with status tracking
- Automatic detection of new articles
Stop finding out weeks too late.
Story Canary is $7/month. Connect your Medium account in under two minutes.
Get Started — $7/month