What's wrong with your theory is that people who didn't enter the contest are also crying foul.

This was a subscription drive and a brand building exercise. In August, I correctly predicted 6 out of 8 boxes I believed the eventual grand prize winner would tick. The people who are upset believed that the quality of the writing would be the first consideration and it clearly wasn't.

They forgot that Medium's first priority is to make money, not to reward excellence. Their second priority is to build and protect their brand. If the best essay had been written by Bill Cosby, Donald Trump (a stretch, I know), or J.K. Rowling, you can bet they wouldn't have won.

Do you actually believe Medium didn't do background checks on the winners? If four white men had written the best essays, would they have been selected? It's one thing to be a sore loser when you're beaten in a chess game or a foot race, and quite another to object to being played for a fool.