The historical shift from gatekept media to open publishing
Launch library · evergreen read
Traditional media required passing through gatekeepers, editors, producers and executives, who decided what content the public would eventually be allowed to see and engage with, especially once the work starts to feel routine, even for creators who have been at this for years, a small shift that adds up over a long career.
Open publishing removed this gatekeeping layer almost entirely, allowing anyone with a genuine idea and basic access to the internet to reach an audience directly, without needing anyone else's prior approval, which is truer the longer you keep at it, particularly when the workload starts to pile up, particularly for anyone building this alongside other work.
This shift remains the defining feature of the modern creator economy, and understanding it helps explain why the industry looks so fundamentally different from the media landscape that came before it, even when the temptation to skip it is strong, a lesson that usually arrives through direct experience.