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Morning Report:聽Medium is moving to a subscription-focused monetization strategy聽and not everyone is enthused.

Medium, a startup that has over 3 rounds from 21 investors, wants $5.

The decision is dividing the technology community. After laying off a and promising to take its business model in a new direction, Medium recently聽 that it is pursuing a paid, subscription-financed model for its published texts.

According to various reports, Medium wants people to for access to what The Verge calls “something, eventually.” Medium itself a slew of potentials that subscribers will receive access to, including “exclusive stories from top writers,” “early access to a new Medium experience,” and an offline reading list.

As you can imagine, the change to Medium’s methods has struck some as a bit loony. My former employer, The Next Web’s Bryan Clark,聽, writing that Medium founder “Ev Williams has lost his goddamn mind.” Not everyone , but it seems fair to say that skepticism regarding Medium’s move is high.

(Back in college, I founded a little company with some friends working on a similar idea. TechCrunch covered our and .)

I highlight all of this because Medium has raised聽so damn much money that it has massive revenue and profit expectations stuck around its neck. That means a media-ish company run by some smart people is betting more than just its reputation that subscriptions are, in fact, the future. There is something to be said for the wager: the New York Times has reported , along with other .

But it isn’t clear yet at聽补濒濒听if Medium can pull off its new strategy given its short history in publishing.

Taking off my observer hat, it would be great to see Medium manage to best expectations and drive quite a lot of new money into writing. To that end, I’m going to sign up with my personal card. Sadly, however, when I tried to give the company my money I ended up here:

I’ll try again later, I suppose.

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